https://www.quora.com/What-do-Protestants-and-Catholics-think-of-Mormons/answer/James-Hough-1

[lokisuperfan]

Can you explain this further, and include why and how Satan is portrayed and gives instructions o the audience? Your explanation is incredibly vague.

 

[AngelaMarie]

It’s very humbling to learn you were part of a big hoax.

I KNOW!
When I was going thru RCIA, I still had walls of serious doubt and skepticism during that time. If I didnt have the pastor I had at the time, I would have never gone thru with Easter Vigil.

What I was very grateful for was not one.ounce.of.pressure. Ever

 

[Lemuel]

Can you explain this further, and include why and how Satan is portrayed and gives instructions o the audience? Your explanation is incredibly vague.

In the endowment you will watch a movie which covers the creation and the Garden of Eden. They reenact the whole scene where Satan beguiled Eve and then they get cast out of the Garden. However in the Garden he is Lucifer. After the garden he visits Adam and Eve as Satan.

 

[AngelaMarie]

Can you explain this further, and include why and how Satan is portrayed and gives instructions o the audience? Your explanation is incredibly vague.

That’s because the temple ceremony is consider very sacred to Mormons, and they are instructed not to talk about it outside of the temple. I respect that it’s sacred to them, and in respect to the faithful Mormons who do come to this site, I won’t go into details as they wouldn’t go into details either.

 

[Horton]

Now this is just a silly question. Christians believe Jesus Christ is God, sent from heaven by the Father to offer salvation to the world. During his earthly ministry, Jesus retained his fully divine nature while incarnate as fully man. He kept his God-ness while being human.

This concept is rejected by the LDS. They believe Jesus is a literal biological son of God, conceived through normal biological means of their heavenly father and heavenly mother.

Here is the confusion for so many. We all say Jesus Christ is the son, however between Christian and LDS the meaning is very different.

 

[AngelaMarie]

Well, if you throw people like Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Ervil Lebaron and Warren Jeffs into the mix, I’d say you’re pretty close.

Not really bastions of morality and righteousness, are they?

 

[Lemuel]

Well as they say, by their fruits …

 

[Lemuel]

This concept is rejected by the LDS. They believe Jesus is a literal biological son of God, conceived through normal biological means of their heavenly father and heavenly mother.

The Mormon version of the Virgin Mary is that she is a virgin because she only had sex with God and since God is not a man, she could honestly say that she knew no man.

 

[CaptainPrudeman]

Only problem is, if she had sex with God then there’d be absolutely no reason to ask Gabriel why she’s gonna get pregnant. We know that because she had to ask, she didn’t intend to conceive by any means at all. This is also how we know she never had relations with Joseph.

 

[TOmNossor]

Would you provide specifics rather than such a broad claim. What ECF believed whatever Jesus Christ was men may become? What writing is this contained in?

I was referring to a phrase often repeated in the ECF. This is so common it has a name, "the exchange formula." Here is an Evangelical Christian (I think) who references Catholic scholar Daniel Keating's Deification and Grace who I keep recommending to those anti-Mormons who reject the IDEA that "men can become gods."

A careful reading of these references provides more than a hint of the idea of exchange that is occurring here, via the Incarnation, between God and man. In fact, as Russell elaborates, the Incarnational mystery, and the divinization of man, which it makes possible, was described by the Fathers as the “exchange formula.” Professor Daniel Keating echoes Russell, elaborating that the “formula of exchange” is the common phrase describing this God-man trade, in which “the eternal Son of God became what we are so that we could become what he is.” Russell continues on this point, referencing St. Ephrem the Syrian, who taught that ‘He gave us divinity,’ and ‘we gave him humanity.’” Russell continues, citing Gosta Hallonsten, who suggests that this “exchange formula” has “remained simply a ‘theological theme’ in the West, while in the East it expresses ‘a comprehensive doctrine that encompasses the whole of the economy of salvation.’ Therefore, continues Hallonsten, ‘A real doctrine of theosis . . . Is to be found only in the East.’” At the time in which he was writing, Hallonsten may have been correct. Happily, however, as we shall see below, there are positive signs that this unfortunate state is being rectified.

Keating uses two words for this becoming claiming they are related and both used. Christ partook/participated in our humanity so we can partake/participate in His divinity.

Unlike any ECF before the 4th century, Keating claims that the ECF who said, "Christ became what we are so that we may become what He is," they really meant that Christ fully and completely became what we are so that we may partially/derivatively become what He is.

Keating's book is excellent, but this is a glaring weakness. I do not believe the ECF would say what they said and clearly communicate what they did if they meant what Keating claims from his MODERN / DEVELOPED Catholic position. They IMO knew the truth and Catholicism developed away from truth. Eastern Orthodoxy developed away also, but to a VERY DIFFERENT place. Aquinas and Palamas profoundly disagreed.

Irenaeus: “He [Christ] was made that which we are so as to complete us to be that which he is” (γεγονότι τοῦτο ὅπερ ἐσμέν, ἵνα ἡμᾶςεἶναι καταρτίσῃ ἐκεῖνο ὅπερ ἐστὶν αὐτός) (Haer. 5, pref.).

I hope that is enough.
Charity, TOm

 

[Crocus]

After all, John Henry Newman did jut that in his autobiography, Apologia Pro Vita Sua

@hope, as I read the shortened paragraph you refer to, not having known it beforehand, it was in fact John Henry Newman who came to mind.

I had read a lot of his writings beginning about 3 years ago. He indeed treated the subject with fairness, immense respect and tangible love.

 

[TOmNossor]

I am sorry. I shouldn’t have missed this. I don’t know if this is because of an updated version or an error on my part. I have not reread this book for almost 15 years, maybe more.
When I quoted it to Karl Keating I made the same error.
I am a fan of Newman and often quote him approvingly. He was committed to the invitation he offered to the High Church Anglicans in the “Oxford Movement.”
I do however suggest that nobody with the exception of njlisa (who is not a former LDS as I understand) writes without a “hint of rancor” and thus per Karl Keating are not good witnesses of what LDS believe.
Charity, TOm

 

[SunshineGrandma]

What happened to the teaching that “John still walks the earth”?

 

[SunshineGrandma]

Why focus on the early Church and their supposed falling away from the truth?

Why not focus on the teachings of Joseph Smith to prove That Mormonism is true?

 

[SunshineGrandma]

I have been around Mormonism for 30 years. They have always taught that god was an actual man. Are you saying something different?

 

[hope]

A priest once told me that there is no such thing as a silly question just silly answers. Your answer is good other than the unnecessary comment.

 

[hope]

No need to apologize. It did not after all change any meaning. Just my quirkiness.

 

[Horton]

By saying silly I meant silly for any Catholic who has attended any part of religious education. I’m not quite sure what your comment is intended to say.

 

[AngelaMarie]

I have been around Mormonism for 30 years. They have always taught that god was an actual man.

This is accurate. Here is what Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism taught from the official LDS’s website

“God Himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make Himself visible,—I say, if you were to see Him today, you would see Him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another. …

Chapter 2: God the Eternal Father

 

[Stephen168]

This is accurate. Here is what Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism taught from the official LDS’s website

“God Himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make Himself visible,—I say, if you were to see Him today, you would see Him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another. …

I think this goes back to the statement earlier in the thread

Pattylt:

I’ve been following this thread and might I point out that it would be perhaps helpful if both sides defined “gods”. The meaning today isn’t the same as during the ECF’s.

Encyclopedia of Mormonism:

Gods and humans represent a single divine lineage, the same species of being, although they and he are at different stages of progress. This doctrine is stated concisely in a well-known couplet by President Lorenzo Snow: “ As man now is, God once was: as God now is, man may be ”

The Mormon understanding of “becoming gods” is not the same as the early patristic fathers. Christian theosis or deification is not what the Mormon Church teaches.