Catholic responses to Blake Ostler (Mormon apologist)?

[Stephen168]

It is not something I pretend to believe is a product of God’s immutablity.
Did you read Father Weinandy? By my reading he acknowledges my concerns and suggests that my concerns (or at least similar ones) have resulted in or threatened to result in “new orthodoxy.”

Now, I reject this doctrine. I also do not believe that Catholics or Protestants worship an impassible God. They just do not interact with God as if He doesn’t interact with them. I think almost every action we take in worship of God is taken as if God is passible.

You invented your definition of immutable.
You claim it is a Catholic definition; which you have known is not true for years.
Then you reject it.
All you reject is a strawman.

That does not change the fact that I truly believe the doctrine of impassibility empties God of what we should worship.

Yes, your definition might empty your god, but not the Christian God.

I do not think what Rory calls Jamesian view of immutability is consistent with the councils.

You are wrong.

 

[Stephen168]

Well, we certainlu know the lds god is changeable. he was once a sinful man, he changes his min d based on money, and he can ;t make up his mind on most issues

He changes his mind and changes who he is; he was a part of the trinity, then one of three gods, then Adam, now back to one of three gods.

 

[TOmNossor]

You invented your definition of immutable.

You claim it is a Catholic definition; which you have known is not true for years.
Then you reject it.
All you reject is a strawman.
It seems that you think I make a claim that I know to be untrue. This makes me a liar in your eyes. Do I misunderstand?
What leads you to believe that I do not believe immutability in Catholic thought is all I claim it is?

But rather than spending time debating my virtue or lack thereof, I would rather see how you would correct my thought (or claimed thought).

What is Immutability?
How is your definition of immutability compossible with a God who loves through genuine interaction with the beloved?
Do you believe your definition of Immutability is consistent with how it has been used in councils of the Catholic Church?
And, do you do a better job defining this than Father Weinandy? Did you read Weinandy? Have I misread Weinandy?

Of course, if you wish you may repeat that I am lying or you may say that whatever God I suggest Catholic thought demands is still superior to the horror that LDS thought demands; but I do not think that will address this question well (and as you likely know I boldly reject the idea the God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit were ever SINFUL men, maybe you will boldly reject the idea that God is immutable and at least we will have that point of common ground).
Charity, TOm

 

[Porknpie]

He changes his mind and changes who he is; he was a part of the trinity, then one of three gods, then Adam, now back to one of three gods.

 

[Robyn_p]

What is Immutability?
How is your definition of immutability compossible with a God who loves through genuine interaction with the beloved?

You seem to think that immutability means basically God’s frozen. That’s not what Catholics mean. God can’t change because he possesses full perfection, change implies a lack of perfection. You have to add something or subtract something to get change.

So why doesn’t that contradict God being able to interact with us? How 'bout an analogy. Lets say you didn’t know 2 plus 2 = 4. I do. I interact with you and move you from ignorance to knowledge, now you know something you didn’t. You were changed by that, but I wasn’t. When we started I knew two plus two equals four, while I was teaching you I still knew two plus two equals four and when it was over I still knew two plus two equals four. I didn’t change, but that didn’t prevent me from helping.

Love doesn’t contradict it either. Love is more than what you described with the father experiencing the joys and sufferings of his son. (Though I fail to see how God possessing all perfection would prevent that. I think He still could, it just wouldn’t add of subtract anything from him. Just like I could share the joy you would have from learning two plus two without losing or gaining any of that knowledge myself. But I’ll leave that up to the philosophers.)
But anyways, even if he couldn’t, that still doesn’t contradict what we believe. What you described is a piece of love but… it’s kind of like a child saying, my dad can’t play with matchbox cars because he’s too big, he doesn’t know what it’s like to drive! Yes he does, he may not play with toy cars, but he has the real thing, and that’s hardly a limitation.

God has the real thing. The feelings that come with love don’t make love anymore intense or real. All our human loves are just participation in The Divine Love. Love desires the good of the other, without any gain for itself. How anyone could say that doesn’t apply to God baffles me. He gains absolutely nothing from creating us, or from dying for us, but we gain everything!!! That is love.

Hope that helped clear a few thing up!

 

[ChristIsTheWay]

You seem to think that immutability means basically God’s frozen. That’s not what Catholics mean. God can’t change because he possesses full perfection, change implies a lack of perfection. You have to add something or subtract something to get change.

So why doesn’t that contradict God being able to interact with us? How 'bout an analogy. Lets say you didn’t know 2 plus 2 = 4. I do. I interact with you and move you from ignorance to knowledge, now you know something you didn’t. You were changed by that, but I wasn’t. When we started I knew two plus two equals four, while I was teaching you I still knew two plus two equals four and when it was over I still knew two plus two equals four. I didn’t change, but that didn’t prevent me from helping.

Love doesn’t contradict it either. Love is more than what you described with the father experiencing the joys and sufferings of his son. (Though I fail to see how God possessing all perfection would prevent that. I think He still could, it just wouldn’t add of subtract anything from him. Just like I could share the joy you would have from learning two plus two without losing or gaining any of that knowledge myself. But I’ll leave that up to the philosophers.)
But anyways, even if he couldn’t, that still doesn’t contradict what we believe. What you described is a piece of love but… it’s kind of like a child saying, my dad can’t play with matchbox cars because he’s too big, he doesn’t know what it’s like to drive! Yes he does, he may not play with toy cars, but he has the real thing, and that’s hardly a limitation.

God has the real thing. The feelings that come with love don’t make love anymore intense or real. All our human loves are just participation in The Divine Love. Love desires the good of the other, without any gain for itself. How anyone could say that doesn’t apply to God baffles me. He gains absolutely nothing from creating us, or from dying for us, but we gain everything!!! That is love.

Hope that helped clear a few thing up!

Very good!

 

[Stephen168]

I cannot make it work (and this is not JUST an axe I hit the Catholic Church with, but a reason that I think Catholicism doesn’t work at least in its most prevalent thought traditions.

It seems that you think I make a claim that I know to be untrue.

Yes, that is why I reposted Rory’s post from over two years ago.

This makes me a liar in your eyes. Do I misunderstand?

At first I thought it made you someone who just liked hitting the Catholic Church with an axe of your making. But now that you frame it this way, yes it could make someone question your honesty. In the future when you bring out this axe, I might add Robyn’s post #64.

What leads you to believe that I do not believe immutability in Catholic thought is all I claim it is?

See Rory’s post

But rather than spending time debating my virtue or lack thereof, I would rather see how you would correct my thought (or claimed thought).

See Rory’s post.

What is Immutability?
How is your definition of immutability compossible with a God who loves through genuine interaction with the beloved?
Do you believe your definition of Immutability is consistent with how it has been used in councils of the Catholic Church?

See Rory’s post.

And, do you do a better job defining this than Father Weinandy? Did you read Weinandy? Have I misread Weinandy?

I didn’t read Father Weinday, because he is not a Council of the Catholic Church.

Of course, if you wish you may repeat that I am lying or you may say that whatever God I suggest Catholic thought demands is still superior to the horror that LDS thought demands; but I do not think that will address this question well (and as you likely know I boldly reject the idea the God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit were ever SINFUL men, maybe you will boldly reject the idea that God is immutable and at least we will have that point of common ground).

Your Church taught that your god was once a man who sinned. My Church teaches that God is immutable. I do not reject my Churches teachings.

I know you are a Blake Ostler fanboy, so I expected to see you on this thread. While I would expect you to attack the Catholic Church at some point, because there is no defense of Mormonism, I was surprised you couldn’t go two posted without attacking the Catholic Church with your strawman.

 

[twopekinguys]

It seems that you think I make a claim that I know to be untrue. This makes me a liar in your eyes. Do I misunderstand?
What leads you to believe that I do not believe immutability in Catholic thought is all I claim it is?

But rather than spending time debating my virtue or lack thereof, I would rather see how you would correct my thought (or claimed thought).

What is Immutability?
How is your definition of immutability compossible with a God who loves through genuine interaction with the beloved?
Do you believe your definition of Immutability is consistent with how it has been used in councils of the Catholic Church?
And, do you do a better job defining this than Father Weinandy? Did you read Weinandy? Have I misread Weinandy?

Of course, if you wish you may repeat that I am lying or you may say that whatever God I suggest Catholic thought demands is still superior to the horror that LDS thought demands; but I do not think that will address this question well (and as you likely know I boldly reject the idea the God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit were ever SINFUL men, maybe you will boldly reject the idea that God is immutable and at least we will have that point of common ground).
Charity, TOm

Nowhere has anyone said you are “lying”, or a “liar”, and you should be ashamed of yourself for even trying that tactic.

Your additional statement of “you may repeat that i am lying”, is despicable at best, and I believe you owe Stephen an apology.

 

[RebeccaJ]

You seem to think that immutability means basically God’s frozen. That’s not what Catholics mean. God can’t change because he possesses full perfection, change implies a lack of perfection. You have to add something or subtract something to get change.

So why doesn’t that contradict God being able to interact with us? How 'bout an analogy. Lets say you didn’t know 2 plus 2 = 4. I do. I interact with you and move you from ignorance to knowledge, now you know something you didn’t. You were changed by that, but I wasn’t. When we started I knew two plus two equals four, while I was teaching you I still knew two plus two equals four and when it was over I still knew two plus two equals four. I didn’t change, but that didn’t prevent me from helping.

Love doesn’t contradict it either. Love is more than what you described with the father experiencing the joys and sufferings of his son. (Though I fail to see how God possessing all perfection would prevent that. I think He still could, it just wouldn’t add of subtract anything from him. Just like I could share the joy you would have from learning two plus two without losing or gaining any of that knowledge myself. But I’ll leave that up to the philosophers.)
But anyways, even if he couldn’t, that still doesn’t contradict what we believe. What you described is a piece of love but… it’s kind of like a child saying, my dad can’t play with matchbox cars because he’s too big, he doesn’t know what it’s like to drive! Yes he does, he may not play with toy cars, but he has the real thing, and that’s hardly a limitation.

God has the real thing. The feelings that come with love don’t make love anymore intense or real. All our human loves are just participation in The Divine Love. Love desires the good of the other, without any gain for itself. How anyone could say that doesn’t apply to God baffles me. He gains absolutely nothing from creating us, or from dying for us, but we gain everything!!! That is love.

Hope that helped clear a few thing up!

 

[RebeccaJ]

I am saying that the immutable and impassible God does not interact with me as a person.
The human father interacts with his son by experiencing the son’s hopes and fears. By celebrating the love the son give the father or lamenting the rejection of the father by the son. The impassible (immutable) God does not have access to this experience because He is totally unchanged.
I think Father Weinandy does an excellent job of explaining why so many Christians are rejecting the impassibility of God.
Here is his essay:
mrrena.com/2004/suffer.php
Note: Weinandy is quite good at expressing why the passibility of God is sweeping over Christian theology even though he argues this is a mistake.
I do not agree that it is a mistake especially if one does not embrace the theological positions built upon the absolute immutability of God.
Weinandy tries to redeem God from the criticism I and many modern theologians offer. Recommending his position is that it is the historical theology of Catholicism and Protestantism and the truths upon which many of the earliest theological controversies turned.
But, I think too much is lost.
I think there are very few folks in any worship service who conceive of God as impassible. To bring this to them would result in these words IMO(slightly out of context), “Woe is me! They have taken my God away from me, … and I know not whom to adore or to address.”

I do not think this is a straw man, but a real issue created by embracing God’s immutability in the axiomatic way it was embraced (a word used by Pelakan and Weinandy-I think).
Charity, TOm

See the excellent reply by Robyn p. I will only add, in regards to God’s perfection, that we understand this in the context of love. God loves perfectly, we do not. We seek to conform ourselves to God, because we trust His love, and seek to perfect our own love. Love for God, love for others, even love for ourself, is flawed. Only God knows how to love, we are learning and in our daily lives are called by God to practice love according to His will, not our own.

“Be it done according to thy word”, is how we view our relationship with God. Not because God is a benevolent dictator, but because He is love, and we trust the One who created us. This is how we understand “Father”. Jesus asked us to be child like (not childish). The relationship with our biological parents, as a young child, is one of trust. Ideally, a parent is not a benevolent dictator, but the people who seek to form us in ways they believe are to our benefit. Our parents, being created as we are, cannot form us in the way that God can. We are all, mother, father and child, formed into perfection by God. God does not force us to conform to Him. He created us with free will in order that we can love Him freely. It is a choice.

He calls to us with love, and waits for us to respond.

To the article you linked to, I understand the argument, but don’t agree that God being moved is an indication of a changing God. As Robyn p said, God is not frozen but acts in human history. We see this as God’s love made manifest. God’s love is unchanging.

God does not become, He is. I’m not seeing this understanding in your thought process.

 

[crazzeto]

TOmNossor:

Hello,
I have read about everything I can get my hands on from Ostler. The strength of his arguments has pulled me from positions I previously held.
I think his toughest critique of Catholic thought comes in his second book Exploring Mormon Thought: Problems of Theism and the Love of God. In this book he critiques a lot of LDS thought too.

I doubt he would say that his work is primarily apologetic. I think he would claim he is first a philosopher. He has absolutely offered apologetics.
Here is an anti-Aquinas argument that I think dismantles much of Catholic thought on the nature of God. It is mostly my translation of Ostler. It is probably more complex than an argument that would pull anyone from one religion to another, but it is a problem I have with Catholic thought.

1. It is easy to say, “the Bible says, ‘call no man father,’†Catholics call men “father;†therefore, Catholicism contradicts the Bible while claiming to embrace the Bible.
2. How about this, Catholics believe that God the Father is non-begotten and non-proceeding, God the Son is non-proceeding but begotten, and God the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. How is it possible that these three are co-equal? Or co-eternal?
3. How is it true that God is impassible and unchanging and yet He love us individually.
   Or
   3a. How can we freely choose between two available options and God know (before or after our choice it does not matter) what we did choose and yet He is impassible.

Now, one is stupid. I have defended Catholicism from such idiocy myself. (But I think LDS are attacked similarly here at Catholic Answers).

Two is more complex, but I am not convinced there is no way out of it.

3a is very philosophy heavy, but I believe Aquinas struggled with this and didn’t solve it.

Let me state it somewhat differently.

1. All that God is and knows is uncaused. God is what He is independent of anything that is not-God. He possesses Aseity. Or he exists absolutely “a se†of Himself. Nothing predicated of God may be said to be caused by anything that is not-God.
2. Humans possess genuine freedom. What this means exactly is debated, but Aquinas and Augustine seemed married to the idea that we act by choosing what we think we should such that our actions are caused by our will. We act in a way that is the result of our choice.
3. God knows all things. While philosophers have debated what “all things†are, nobody would suggest that God does not know what I choose to do yesterday. God knows what I did yesterday.
4. It is impossible for what I did yesterday to be independently caused by me such that I was free act as I saw fit and for God to know what I choose to do yesterday without some component of His knowledge being caused by my choice.

So if I cause my acts FREELY, God cannot know what I FREELY caused and still not be affected by me.

While it may seem trivial to the casual observer how God could know what I did yesterday, it is not if God possesses Aseity. One might say, surely God can “watch†me make a choice (some might even talk about watching from “eternal time,â€) but to observe me do something is to be affected by me and God is not.

The reason I link it with #3 is that this is a big deal for me. If God is unchanged, immutable, and impassible; I cannot believe He loves me. Believing God loves me is IMO necessary for having a proper relationship with God. Therefore I reject the idea that God is immutable, impassible, absolutely unchanging, and exists a se. The God I know loves me as an individual and is affected by me. He hears my prayers because I choose to offer them. He feels my love because I express it to Him. He has an I-Thou relationship with me, not an I-It relationship with me.
cont …

The trinity is essentially a mystery, the problem with Olsters argument is that the Bible describes Christ as being begotten, as well the procession of the Spirit. The scriptures also say that Christ was there from the start for instance in the ovature of John’s gospel.

There is only one God, this is scripture going back to the OT. so essentially, while we can not (will not ever) fully comprehend the nature, the nature is biblical.

The Mormon position though, is fundamentally refuted by scripture.

Edit
I said there are references, I wanted to provide them. Previously I was on my phone which is not condusive to this type of posting.

drbo.org/chapter/50001.htm

1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] The same was in the beginning with God. [3] All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. [4] In him was life, and the life was the light of men. [5] And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

The Word is understood Jesus, who is God and was with God from the begining.

drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=50&ch=1&l=18#x

[18] No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

The Son is begotton

drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=50&ch=15&l=26#x

[26] But when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall give testimony of me.

A reference to the procession of the Spirit, from the Father through the Son. Of particular note, this is the temporal procession to man kind after the passion. The procession internally is the same
Posted from Catholic.com App for Android

 

[crazzeto]

I hate double posting, but another good way to look at it is like this…

Do you personally understand quantum computing?
(No, at least not me)

Does quantum computing work?
(Yes, very well indeed)

There’s a slight difference as quantum computing is knowable fully by men, the trinity is not 100% fully knowable. But the point is this, we need not fully understand the concept for it to be true, our Lord Jesus Christ left us the doctrine. It is true.

 

[KathleenGee]

Pope Benedict is the Roman Catholic Church’s greatest theologian for our times.

Regarding the Crown of Suffering: "It is because Jesus is mocked and wears the crown of suffering that he appears as the true King. His scepter is justice (Ps 45:7). The price of justice in this world is suffering: Jesus, the true King, does not reign through violence, but through love which suffers for us and with us. He takes up the Cross, our cross, the burden of being human, the burden of the world. And so he goes before us and points out to us the way which leads to true life.

Jesus is not a belief philosophy or some historical figure.

Jesus Christ is the encounter of New Life.

In regard to ‘no love without suffering’…“pain is part of being human. Anyone who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else, because there can be no love without suffering, because it always demands an element of self-sacrifice, because, given tempermental differences and the drama of situations, it will always bring with it renunciation and pain…Anyone who inwardly accepted suffering becomes more mature and more understanding of others, becomes more human.”

It has been said here…Christ did not call us to become our own gods or work on ourselves to be gods. Instead what Christ did for us, was help us to become more human, more truly ourselves…union of our humanity with Christ, the greatest source of happiness.

 

[KathleenGee]

One additional reflection on suffering love by Pope Benedict, "The mercy of Christ is not a cheap grace; it does not presume evil is trivial. Christ carries in his body and on his soul all the weight of evil, and all its destructive force. He burns and transforms evil, and all its destructive force through suffering, in the fire of his suffering love.

"The day of vindication and the year of favor meet in the paschal mystery, in Christ’s dying and rising. This is the vindication for God: He Himself, in the person of the Son, suffers for us.

The more we are touched by the mercy of the Lord, the more we draw closer in solidarity with his suffering – and become willing to bear in our flesh " what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ: (Col 1, 24).

So it is the suffering of Christ working through and accepting our sufferings that evil is vanquished from this world. We will not know the redemptive value of all our sufferings in this life…united with Christ on the Cross…against the forces of evil…until we are in heaven.

So instead of skirmishing with suffering or wanting to run away from it, we, through the power of Christ, the Son of God given us by the Heavenly Father , we fulfill Christ’s command to pick up our Cross and follow Him.

Death…where is your sting??

 

[truthseeker32]

Do the Catholics here believe that God can change in the sense of moving from one state to another? For instance, can God change from thinking about you to not thinking about you? Is God eternally thinking about you, me, and everyone else? Does God answer prayers? If so, does this mean from all eternity he is answering the prayers he chooses to answer?

 

[crazzeto]

Do the Catholics here believe that God can change in the sense of moving from one state to another? For instance, can God change from thinking about you to not thinking about you? Is God eternally thinking about you, me, and everyone else? Does God answer prayers? If so, does this mean from all eternity he is answering the prayers he chooses to answer?

For you to exist, God must be thinking about you. Does that help?

 

[TOmNossor]

Robyn p,
Thank you for your response.

Do I believe the immutable God is “frozen?”
I think I would say that in a way yes.
God exists timelessly as the unmoved mover. His “moving” is eternally willed and DOES NOT OCCUR IN RESPONSE TO OUR FREE ACTIONS.
To me this means that if I freely choose something it does not affect God or God’s actions. He can be the “concurring energy” that He eternally gives to me (indeed in my view where God is passible, He is this too), but He cannot respond to me as an individual that freely choses between loving Him and hating Him.
So, frozen, not exactly. The immutable God is eminent throughout the universe. His actions hold the planets in their orbits and provide me a necessary enlivening force without which I would cease (cease to exist in the Catholic view, but cease to have the ability to act in my view). His actions do much more than I can conceive I expect.
But, if He is immutable His actions do not occur in response to me. I have no power to affect Him in any way. He may be said to love me because He eternally has willed good for me and provides me the concurring power to grow towards Him and worship Him and glorify Him. But He cannot be said to love me in that He concerns Himself with the individual free choice I take (including my love or rejection of Him and my pains/triumphs).

Your 2+2=4 analogy is very similar to a LDS (and I assume Catholic) response to the “problem of prayer.” If God is all knowing and perfect, what do we pray for (other than to worship Him and give Him thanks, what of petitionary prayer)? Is it to change God’s plans? Is it to inform God of our hopes and fears? God’s plans are perfect and He knows our hopes and fears (unless He is immutable ). In this answer (one I have heard given by LDS too), our prayers move us not God. The purpose of prayer is to express our petitions, but to be humble enough to except God’s will. I reject this. I believe our prayers are woven into God’s plan and have an impact upon the direction of our lives. God surely does not give us something that will inevitably damn us to hell, but He takes into account our prayers and grants blessings that differ from what would have been had we not freely chosen to pray.

I agree that “love desires the good of the other without the gain for itself.” But, to be totally unaffected by us is not the way we love or the way I expect God to love.
Let’s think of a family. Father, Mother, and child. The child is about 12. They have selfless love for one another. They are constantly thinking about how to love, serve, and increase the joy and satisfaction of the other two members of the family. They smile and rejoice together for significant time each day. And they have everything you and I have experienced as happiness more frequently and maybe to a greater degree than we have (a human degree, but greater in this example). The child has a friend/acquaintance at school. The friend’s parents are getting a divorce and the friend is really upset.
Let me offer two scenarios in which this family might exist.

1. The child may or may not notice the friend’s sadness. The child may or may not provide wisdom to the friend about how to deal with the problem (perhaps via a book written because the child/family is concerned about the plight of their fellow beings and knew divorce happens). But, the child feels no compassion for the friend. The child is unmoved by the friend’s pain. The child is blissfully happy and does not have a response to the pain of his friend on any level beyond maybe noticing.
2. The child notices and provides wisdom. He really does feel sorry for his friend. He loves his friend and the pain his friend is in affects him. A tear for the friend might roll down the child’s cheek when he first hears about his friend’s pain. Now, the child is connected with his family. He shares all this with them. They are all affected. But, this does not change the fact that they are still an extraordinarily happy family. The pain of the friend is experienced, but it does not incapacitate the family or drag them into despair. It becomes part of the well of experiences that affect the family regularly.
   In scenario #2 the wisdom provided is not provided because the child wants to relieve the pain he feels for his friend but out of selfless love for his friend.

I am certain the analogy can be pushed to its breaking point. I would add that the Trinity has much greater love and connection and joy and … than we can conceive of for this family. But, I would argue that the family in #1 has greater love than in #2 and the God involved analogously to #1 is far more worthy of my worship than the God involved in #2.

Do you agree that #1 and #2 are a good way of characterizing this situation?
I think they are.
Charity, TOm

 

[Stephen168]

Do I believe the immutable God is “frozen?”
I think I would say that in a way yes.
God exists timelessly as the unmoved mover. His “moving” is eternally willed and DOES NOT OCCUR IN RESPONSE TO OUR FREE ACTIONS.
To me this means that if I freely choose something it does not affect God or God’s actions. He can be the “concurring energy” that He eternally gives to me (indeed in my view where God is passible, He is this too), but He cannot respond to me as an individual that freely choses between loving Him and hating Him.
So, frozen, not exactly. The immutable God is eminent throughout the universe. His actions hold the planets in their orbits and provide me a necessary enlivening force without which I would cease (cease to exist in the Catholic view, but cease to have the ability to act in my view). His actions do much more than I can conceive I expect.
But, if He is immutable** His actions** do not occur in response to me. I have no power to affect Him in any way. He may be said to love me because He eternally has willed good for me and provides me the concurring power to grow towards Him and worship Him and glorify Him. But He** cannot be said to love me** in that He concerns Himself with the individual free choice I take (including my love or rejection of Him and my pains/triumphs).

Not Catholic but interesting and sad

 

[TOmNossor]

Yes, that is why I reposted Rory’s post from over two years ago.

I might add Robyn’s post #64.
See Rory’s post
See Rory’s post.
See Rory’s post.
Rory is a great guy, but could you believe that I do not believe his post or Robyn’s post eliminates the problems I see?
Is that possible to you?

Have you heard of the two papyri theory for the origins of the Book Of Abraham?
How would you feel if I assumed you continuing to use the BOA and the BOB as evidence against the CoJCoLDS as evidence that you were intentionally claiming something you knew to not be true?
I do not even find the two papyri theory particularly wonderful, but some LDS do. Am I just dishonest in my assessment of this so I can hold onto a problem with my church? I don’t think so. I just do not think we have explained the BOA for some of the same reasons I think critics have not explained the BOM.

Hopefully my BOA example will aid you in seeing that I do not think Rory or Robyn have done a ton to answer this question for me.

I didn’t read Father Weinday, because he is not a Council of the Catholic Church.

I suspected you had not read him. You see Father Weinandy surely knows similar things to what Rory and Robyn do, but he is quite honest in his acknowledgement of how this problem has impacted folks. He list Catholics that I think he would say have somewhat abandoned Tradition they are so impacted by this issue.
I surely think there are options other than my dishonesty or ???, to explain why I do not go “ahh, I see” as soon as I read Rory or Robyn.

I know you are a Blake Ostler fanboy, so I expected to see you on this thread. While I would expect you to attack the Catholic Church at some point, because there is no defense of Mormonism, I was surprised you couldn’t go two posted without attacking the Catholic Church with your strawman.

“Fanboy” I guess is better than “waterboy” which I have also been called.
Is it different when I “attack” the Catholic Church than when folks “attack” the LDS Church. Defense of the Mormonism does not seem to be a high priority here. When I thought I had to provide an answer to every query it was not the absence of answers that I found overwhelming, but the abundance of queries. Would it surprise you to know that I can scarcely remember a new line of attack on Mormonism or one that I do not have thoughts in response to? By your statement, maybe it would.
However, it looks to me like many folks here have never even considered how the immutability of God might empty Him of worship-worthy-ness. Perhaps I can aid you seeing new areas in which Catholic apologetics are lacking. Unmoored from Catholic authority Protestants have made the “new orthodoxy” the passibility of God. I would suggest to such Protestants that they have done well except that the doctrine of the Trinity and the dual nature of Christ and … are so dependent upon the impossibility of God they should find a “new orthodoxy” there too.
Charity, TOm

 

[TOmNossor]

Nowhere has anyone said you are “lying”, or a “liar”, and you should be ashamed of yourself for even trying that tactic.

Your additional statement of “you may repeat that i am lying”, is despicable at best, and I believe you owe Stephen an apology.
I am not ashamed and you might be right that I should be.
I truly read his comments as accusing me of intentionally stating falsehood.
Combined with his unwillingness to read Father Weinandy who said many things I have been trying to say, I figured he was using a “tactic.”
I have been a little confused by this thread.
I did not think that the problems with the impassibility of God were so unclear. They have been an issue for me since before 2008 (as Stephen showed).
So me saying that he can “repeat that I am lying” was somewhat of a tactic. And towards communicating with Stephen was not good. I should have said that differently.
And, if I offended you, I am sorry. If I offended Stephen, I am sorry too, I interpreted his response as an acknowledgement that I had at least reasonably read his post and that he was not offended.

I have dealt with the Book of Abraham issue in the past. I would not have any desire to deal with it here. I however would not offer a quote from 4 years ago where the two papyri theory was offered and then tell the poster that they should know better than to bring it up and they are intentionally questioning something they should know is not an issue. I hope that I would not even do this for something I think is a slam dunk solution for the CoJCoLDS (like “Adieu” – I still do not get why this bothers folks).

But the problems with the impassibility of God are large in my opinion, and the best answers I have found from Weinandy and Gavrilyuk do not solve the issue. I have even looked more into the Jamesian solution, and I think it is even more clearly ONLY about covenantal faithfulness.

Anyway, I try to be my best self on the Internet (because I can pause between stimulus and response). Surely I fail. I hope I fail less here than IRL, and I fail their a lot.
Charity, TOm