Wow, Parker. It really is like we’re speaking two different languages. It’s like normal concepts of “revelation,” “understanding,” “logic,” and “contradiction” don’t apply to you.
Remember that my comments are in the context of revelation, that all revelation was completed in Christ and now we are just trying to understand it and apply it better. There is absolutely nothing contradictory about that.
Let me start with a simple example that I will refer back to.
Hopefully you’ll agree that Creation is a form of God’s revelation to us—He reveals something of Himself in it, as well as how He works and what He wants.
All of God’s revelation through Creation is complete—this is a self-evident fact, since God Created all matter and energy and the laws by which it operates long ago. Everything that has arisen since operates by that original Creation, save for miracles by which (by definition) God goes beyond the normal laws of His own Creation to create an exception or deliver a Divinely-guided coincidence.
So we have Creation, a form of revelation that is complete. Genesis even says that’s so. And yet we don’t understand everything about Creation, do we?
So while God authored the laws of nature and these remain constant, we have for ages and likely will continue for all time investigating and learning more and coming to understand and apply more about how nature works. For ages organisms have existed as multi-cellular life forms. Yet we didn’t even discover the cell until a few hundred years ago. The discovery of DNA is less than a century old. The discovery of subatomic particles is even younger. We keep understanding (and applying) more and more of nature. Yet those things have long existed.
So it is with the spiritual revelations of God to man. They were completed in Christ, yet we still have and need all of eternity to understand and apply, just as we do with scientific investigation of Creation.
“Revelation” does not mean “learning,” as you seem to think. Your definition of revelation now seems to mean: God exposing details of Himself and His Will to man; any transmission of such information from one person to another; guidance by the Spirit on matters of what to do and how to understand things; any learning of such by an individual. I think I’ve even forgotten some. You bundle far too much up in that word, and so it leaves you in near-total confusion about the concept. You cannot speak coherently about a concept if you cannot be specific about senses, rather than jumping around and including all senses at once. That is why other Christians can’t communicate with you—you have completely redefined and totally confused the concept of “revelation” (as well as so many others) in the common context of these discussions. Other Christians mean only the first of those meanings I gave above.
Yet He told the apostles, “This kind cometh not out except by fasting and prayer.” (They needed to learn more at that point, it seems to me He was saying.) He taught in parables that had various levels of meaning. God let Moses know more than the rest of the Israelites. Why didn’t He take them all up on the mountain and reveal everything to the whole group, based on your assertion of “holding nothing back”?
Matthew 17:21? Jesus was speaking about how to drive out a demon! Please explain your connection here; you seem to have taken this totally out of context.
As for parables, yes, they had various levels of meaning. Just as a cell has many organelles in it, each with different complementary functions, and each composed of different molecules, composed of different atoms, composed of different subatomic particles, etc. As soon as Jesus tells a parable, that parable has been Revealed. Understanding its various levels of meaning, “plumbing the depths” as I said before, is something for us to do, and the Spirit can guide us in it. It is NOT “revelation.” The revelation already happened when the parable was told. Why is that hard for you to understand?
As for Moses, he was before Christ, in the prophetic age, when God revealed things little by little to prepare us for Christ. The “holding nothing back” applies to Christ, who literally gave all of Himself to and for us on the Cross and in the Eucharist. This concept Mormons seem to have that everything Christ would do was revealed immediately to Adam and was known or knowable since, with pre-Christ Christians, is just inane babbling, the product of poor imaginations and utter incomprehension of God or His gift of logic and rationality to man.
I absolutely agree that they are shorthand. They bring connotations that denote “fear” and “mistrust” and “mystery” and “heresy”. Of course you would use those words to foster the kind of fear you desire to foster.
They are shorthand for what I said they are shorthand for: referring to belief systems and the controversies and arguments by which they were defeated. Just as “Christian” describes a basic belief system, and just as “Cynics” in the philosophical context refers to the philosophical arguments of the Cynics. “Occult” means “hidden knowledge,” which is an exact description of what you are saying God’s revelation is. It also, like the terms “witchcraft” and “sorcery,” calls to mind (in this context) the Biblical references to them. The associations with “fear,” “mistrust,” and “heresy” are from the Bible on this count, so when you disagree with that, you disagree with the Bible.
So you see, there is no problem with calling things what they are. It is even useful, and counterproductive not to. And it is done properly all the time in a philosophical setting. You’re just upset because I called you out; those who like to be in the dark hate the light shined upon them (note the Bible reference?).
If it is an “infinite truth”, then to me that implies there is more to understand than all the “Deposit of Faith” has to say. I think that is a contradictory statement.
There is no contradiction. Of course there is more to understand. How has science had so much work to do and found so many things while studying what was already there? How has the study of literature survived and found all sorts of meanings and applications in various literary works, when those works were completed long ago? Of course God’s revelation of His infinite Self would take eternity to understand, even though it could be revealed in an instant.
Comparing your politically correct post with Ricko’s historically accurate one, I cannot understand how you can exist with such extreme cognitive dissonance. 
No wonder you are so angry. :console: Unless you read the BOM as an allegory on the consequences of racism, written from the point of view of those whose racism contributed to their destruction, (and that takes some creative reading, and contradicts JS’s “corrections” and LDS teachings) you MUST conclude that it is a racist work. There is no way out of it. I would suggest you read it again.
