Are Mormons Christians

  • Thread starter Thread starter StephenL
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Janderich said:
Jesus is unique in that he is the only begotten of God in the flesh. But all people on this earth are spiritually begotten sons and daughters of God. In other words, they were literally God’s offspring (Acts 17:28) when we lived as spirits before this earth life.
Click to expand...
How can anyone be literally God’s offspring when we all have always existed, it is impossible to be the parent of someone that has existed as long as you have.
 
zaffiroborant said:
How can anyone be literally God’s offspring when we all have always existed, it is impossible to be the parent of someone that has existed as long as you have.
Click to expand...
No it’s not. Every baby born on this planet existed long before coming here to Earth. Birth is not the beginning, just as death is not the end. We have existed as individuals for a long, long time. Look inside yourself, you will see it is so.
 
gazelam said:
Also, the doctrine of the Trinity seems to me to be a very limiting theology. My understanding is that it assumes that an all-powerful God is powerless to put in place any process to results in another being like Him.
Click to expand...
No, it doesn’t assume that. What is actually the case is that it is logically incoherent to claim that there is more than one all-powerful being. It doesn’t make logical sense.
Here are a few ECF quotes supporting the believe that we can become ontologically as God.
Click to expand...
Irenaeus - We have not been made gods from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods.
Click to expand...
Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses (Irenaeus Against Heresies), book 4, chapter 38, in The Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, vol. 1 of Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 522.
Click to expand...
Irenaeus - Passing beyond the angels, and be made after the image and likeness of God.
Click to expand...
Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses (Irenaeus Against Heresies), book 5, chapter 36, in vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers, 567.

Do we cast blame on him [God] because we were not made gods from the beginning, but were at first created merely as men, and then later as gods? Although God has adopted this course out of his pure benevolence, that no one may charge him with discrimination or stinginess, he declares, “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are sons of the Most High.” . . . For it was necessary at first that nature be exhibited, then after that what was mortal would be conquered and swallowed up in immortality. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4:38 (4)
Click to expand...
Clement of Alexandria - Being destined to sit on thrones with the other gods that have been first put in their places by the Saviour.
Click to expand...
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata (Miscellanies), book 7, chapter 10, in Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), vol. 2 of Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 539.
Click to expand...
Clement of Alexandria - Knowing God, he will be made like God. . . . And that man becomes God, since God so wills.
Click to expand...
Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus (The Instructor), book 3, chapter 1, in vol. 2, Fathers of the Second Century, 271;
Click to expand...
Hippolytus - 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.
Click to expand...
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
Click to expand...
Cyprian - What Christ is, we Christians shall be, if we imitate Christ.
Click to expand...
Cyprian, “On the Vanity of Idols,” The Treatises of Cyprian, 6:15, in vol. 5, Fathers of the Third Century, 469.
Click to expand...
Origen - The true God [referring to the Father], then, is ‘The God,’ and those who are formed after Him are gods, images, as it were, of Him the prototype.
Click to expand...
Origen, Commentary on John, 2:2, in The Gospel of Peter, the Diatessaron of Tatian, vol. 9 of Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 323.
Click to expand...
St. Athanasius of Alexandria - [God] was made flesh in order that we might be enabled to be made gods.
Click to expand...
Athanasius, Orationes Contra Arianus (Four Discourses Against the Arians), 1.39, 3.34, in St. Athanasius: Select Works and Letters, vol. 4 of A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church: Second Series, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1978–79), 329, 413
Click to expand...
And for good measure, I’ll quote CCC 460… 🙂
Click to expand...
The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature”: “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.” “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.”
Click to expand...
Yes, the doctrine of theosis, or deification, has been a part of Catholic and Orthodox theology, liturgy, etc for 2000 years. All of the Church Fathers quoted above taught the above within the context of Catholic/Orthodox doctrine, and most of them are also revered as saints in Roman and Eastern Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and sometimes Anglicanism, and some were also Bishops or Priests in the Church. The doctrine was never lost.
When you say “our God”, are you referring to God the Father or God the Son? In general the LDS belief is that God the Father was not always the God the Father. As far as being “given this universe” LDS believe that this universe was created by Jesus Christ out of existing matter under the direction of God the Father.
Click to expand...
I hope this helps…
Click to expand...
I think it’s clear that Catholics and most Christians readily accept that God became man, i.e. Jesus Christ. God the Son incarnated on this earth, and was already fully God prior to the Incarnation. What he is talking about is the teaching that God the Father was once a man that progressed to Godhood (and the derivative belief that there is an infinite regress of Gods), as various LDS prophets and apostles have taught. Such a belief is untenable in traditional Christianity.
 
Janderich said:
No it’s not. Every baby born on this planet existed long before coming here to Earth. Birth is not the beginning, just as death is not the end. We have existed as individuals for a long, long time. Look inside yourself, you will see it is so.
Click to expand...
You can not be the literal parent of a being that already exists independently it is impossible no matter your protestations otherwise. You can adopt an already existing being but you can not claim it is your literal offspring. According to you we have existed as individuals forever, making it impossible to be offspring of anyone. What you describe is more like the symbiotic species the Trill and the Goa’uld portrayed in science fiction shows, not actual offspring.
 
zaffiroborant said:
You can not be the literal parent of a being that already exists independently it is impossible no matter your protestations otherwise. You can adopt an already existing being but you can not claim it is your literal offspring. According to you we have existed as individuals forever, making it impossible to be offspring of anyone. What you describe is more like the symbiotic species the Trill and the Goa’uld portrayed in science fiction shows, not actual offspring.
Click to expand...
Mormons believe in a sort of phase shifting. While everyone is self existent and always existing, action is required for a self existing being to progress along a well defined path. The final goal being godhood.

A being with Godly powers is required to turn “intelligence”, the base form of human existence into spirits. This is what makes God, “Father”. What first Godly being started this wheel turning? Mormons don’t worry over such questions.

Some Mormon leaders have taught that this a procreative process between gods and goddesses. Modern Mormons may or may not support this idea.

The next step in the defined progression is for a spirit to be slipped into a body, as a body is required to be a god ( in Mormon belief). So the same God that beget spirit children from “intelligence”, created a means by which bodies are procreated, in order to provide bodies for existing spirit children. So every self existing and always existing being, has a mortal father and mother, as well as a spiritual Father and Mother. Two parents, for each person.

I’m having Saturday Warriors flashbacks.

Of course, all of this is way, way, way outside of Christianity. Mormonism uses the same name for their God, and has borrowed from Christianity, but that is about where the similarity ends.
 
mtolympus said:
When non-LDS talk of the Mormon God or gods they are usually referring to the law of eternal progression. They qoute Joseph Smith who said: “As man is God once was was, as God is man may become.” In other words God Our Father had a Father, and we, His children, may become like Him!
Click to expand...
this is another reason why Mormans are not Christians. They don’t worship the same God as most Christians do. Our God has always been God, always is God, and always will be God. He had no beginning and has no ending. He does not progress or change. We are created beings. We have a beginning. We can never be God. To claim we can be God is to violate the 1st commandment.
 
vsedriver said:
this is another reason why Mormans are not Christians. They don’t worship the same God as most Christians do. Our God has always been God, always is God, and always will be God. He had no beginning and has no ending. He does not progress or change. We are created beings. We have a beginning. We can never be God. To claim we can be God is to violate the 1st commandment.
Click to expand...
I love your profile picture.🙂
 
RebeccaJ said:
A being with Godly powers is required to turn “intelligence”, the base form of human existence into spirits. This is what makes God, “Father”. What first Godly being started this wheel turning? Mormons don’t worry over such questions.
Click to expand...
That was a question I asked as a teenager and never received an answer. I guess Mormons who do worry over such questions do not remain Mormon.
 
mtolympus said:
Did the Catholic Jesus create Lucifer?
Click to expand...
There is no “Catholic” Jesus. There is the Biblical Jesus and the morphed js one…you know…the one who was the result of actual intercourse between the once-human god and Mary…

And the lds god is Adam…according to Brigham
 
TexanKnight said:
There is no “Catholic” Jesus. There is the Biblical Jesus and the morphed js one…you know…the one who was the result of actual intercourse between the once-human god and Mary…

And the lds god is Adam…according to Brigham
Click to expand...
Tex, does or did the LDS teach that the garden of Eden was in Missouri? If so, is this still the teaching today?
 
mtolympus said:
Did the Catholic Jesus create Lucifer?
Click to expand...
Jesus created all things:

Colossians 1:16-17

For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

FYI: Catholic understand thrones, dominions, principalities and powers, as a reference to a hierarchy of angels, of which the fallen are “principalities and powers”. (Col 2:13-15)

And even when you were dead [in] transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross; despoiling the principalities and the powers, he made a public spectacle of them,leading them away in triumph by it.
 
batman1973 said:
Oh, now, you had to bring that up. Now I am too. Thanks a heap.😛
Click to expand...
Who are these children coming down,
Coming down like gentle rain through darkened skies?
With glory trailing from their feet as they go?
And endless promise in their eyes?

:dancing:
 
RebeccaJ said:
Who are these children coming down,
Coming down like gentle rain through darkened skies?
With glory trailing from their feet as they go?
And endless promise in their eyes?

:dancing:
Click to expand...
Well played…:rotfl:

My turn:
My turn, it’s my turn.
It ends with death it begins with birth
And it’s my turn, it’s my turn,
It’s my turn on earth.
 
batman1973 said:
Well played…:rotfl:

My turn:
My turn, it’s my turn.
It ends with death it begins with birth
And it’s my turn, it’s my turn,
It’s my turn on earth.
Click to expand...
:rotfl: I had the soundtrack on vinyl and played it endlessly until my dad threatened vinyl destruction. Good 'ol Lex.
 
Janderich said:
Or the KJV, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God…” This simply validates my point. Why is Paul telling us to have the same mindset as Christ in this matter? If we were of a different form he would not ask us to think it “not robbery to be equal with God” as Christ considered himself. Do you see the very analogy confirms the point?

That being said, you are correct about humility. I do not mean to say that we are like him at present. We all simply have the potential in us but it may be eons and eons of time before the righteous approach His attributes, His character. We currently are as nothing even lest then the dust of the earth for we do not at present follow him in all things but have gone our own way.
Click to expand...
Something else that’s been on my mind lately, even before starting on this thread, is that the Mormon idea of God is really quite limited. In the Catholic, most other Christians, Jews (and I believe even among Muslims) is that God is the God of the WHOLE UNIVERSE!!! Where as the Mormon idea of God is that He is only the God of this world alone. My idea of God (as a Catholic Christian) is that God is an INFINATE GOD, ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top