LDS worship

[TexanKnight]

Oh, I would say it’s fair. I’d go as far as to make the claim that Mormonism today looks a whole lot more orthodox than ever. I’m even having an increasingly hard time really distinguishing the Mormon doctrine of the Godhead from the Orthodox understanding of the Trinity. Naturally, our critics point more to the amorphous ghost of Mormonism Past to describe us today.

But Mormonism wants to be mainstream, and I think this is a development along those lines. Me, I’m interested in the adventure of Mormonism’s past worship. It was outrageous and exciting; almost anything could have been possible in those days. Now we are standardized, generalized, correlated, and all that boring stuff. That’s my assessment of Mormon worship in the 21st century, anyway.

Despite my proclamations of true Mormonism, I have always said I enjoyed being LDS. I truly loved my mission and I loved the closeness of the members. That part is still attractive to me

 

[pmccombs]

Mr. McComb,

I appreciate your honesty. You are making progress. Struggling with cognitive dissonance is not fun.

Actually, I rather enjoy it. For me, dissonance is not a problem–it is exhilarating. It suggests a universe of possibilities. I am satisfied to live and not know. I quite recommend it, actually. But you are right in general, I suppose. I do hope I am making progress, and you never know what the future will bring. But enough about me: I hope that I have done respectably in representing Mormon worship to a crowd of Catholics, some of them quite hostile to my Church. What do you think? A nihilistic Mormon agnostic who rather prefers a lot of the Catholic doctrines, running interference on behalf of his beleaguered faith. I’m sure my Church would not choose me for their spokesperson, as I am a rather embarrassing fellow at times, and I certainly don’t speak for the LDS Church by any means. I didn’t really expect to find myself in such a situation, but there you have it.

 

[pmccombs]

I agree that the Mormonism of JS time was much more of a believe what you like, and who is anyone to tell me I can’t believe X. Unless of course, it was a Catholic belief…no one is allowed to believe what the Catholic Church has to teach. Then or now.

Mormonism is absolutely founded as an opposition to orthodoxy. It can never embrace it, as there is no such thing as orthodoxy in Mormonism. Not even today.

Mormon apologists attempt to create some sort of orthodoxy, but reduced to the lowest common denominator, Mormon apology is just someone’s opinion.

There is definitely Mormon orthodoxy, which was really solidified in the time of Harold B. Lee with the correlation department in the church. You must understand that orthodoxy, the word itself, refers to conformance to an authoritative doctrine or philosophy, of which I assure you the LDS church has it in spades. What is coming out of Mormonism is highly uniform and standardized. You will find us Mormons very predictable in our attitudes and behaviors and beliefs. That is, by definition, orthodoxy.

That is not to say that Mormon orthodoxy is the same as Christian Orthodoxy, by which I mean that set of doctrines developed during the first century AD in the struggles for authentication among the divergent sects that self-identified as Christian. But, as I learn more about early Christian groups, the more a I realize Mormons are surprisingly “Orthodox” in comparison.

I merely say that what Mormonism teaches today is a much tamer Mormonism that is more easily digested by the Orthodox Christian because it assumes an ever greater similarity to that doctrine as I see it. I suspect that many Mormons, though, would tend to agree with you that there is no such thing as Orthodoxy (capital O) in Mormonism today, as it is a point of Mormon satisfaction to be, well, not apostate (from the Mormon perspective).

As for your assessment of Mormon apologetics, I suspect you are right about opinion, but I also extend that same assessment to the apologists of all other faiths and think them of a hardly superior quality than anything in Mormonism. They’re all cherry-picking and remaking the world in their own image, that’s all. It is all so much sophistry and so forth, among which many gems are to be found, I admit.

 

[RebeccaJ]

There is definitely Mormon orthodoxy, which was really solidified in the time of Harold B. Lee with the correlation department in the church. You must understand that orthodoxy, the word itself, refers to conformance to an authoritative doctrine or philosophy, of which I assure you the LDS church has it in spades. What is coming out of Mormonism is highly uniform and standardized. You will find us Mormons very predictable in our attitudes and behaviors and beliefs. That is, by definition, orthodoxy.

Mormonism has a solid orthopraxy, in most cases. Orthodoxy I’m not convinced. Just here, in this forum, we can ask an LDS person one question and receive different answers from each person.

Orthodoxy means “right belief”. You can’t say this here:

That is not to say that Mormon orthodoxy is the same as Christian Orthodoxy, by which I mean that set of doctrines developed during the first century AD in the struggles for authentication among the divergent sects that self-identified as Christian. But, as I learn more about early Christian groups, the more a I realize Mormons are surprisingly “Orthodox” in comparison.

and then say this:

I merely say that what Mormonism teaches today is a much tamer Mormonism that is more easily digested by the Orthodox Christian because it assumes an ever greater similarity to that doctrine as I see it. I suspect that many Mormons, though, would tend to agree with you that there is no such thing as Orthodoxy (capital O) in Mormonism today, as it is a point of **Mormon satisfaction to be, well, not apostate **(from the Mormon perspective).

You’ve just negated orthodoxy with that statement alone.

As for your assessment of Mormon apologetics, I suspect you are right about opinion, but I also extend that same assessment to the apologists of all other faiths and think them of a hardly superior quality than anything in Mormonism. They’re all cherry-picking and remaking the world in their own image, that’s all. It is all so much sophistry and so forth, among which many gems are to be found, I admit.

Catholic apologetics is based on Catholic orthodoxy. It is what it is. There are non-orthodox apologists, no doubt, but most well-catechized Catholics will see the heterodox fairly easily and clearly. I can’t say I see this with Mormons. Individual Mormons vary so widely in what they believe and have a tendency to hide beliefs they think Christians will view as non-Christian. Which makes it is difficult for non-Mormons to determine what, exactly, is Mormon doctrine. Combined with the fact that Mormon doctrine changes…there is no orthodoxy in Mormonism.

Catholic doctrines can’t change, as Mormon doctrine does from decade to decade, leader to leader. The Catholic faithful themselves, us, don’t tolerate drifting doctrines. Where Mormons view drifting/changing doctrines as acceptable.

 

[pmccombs]

Mormonism has a solid orthopraxy, in most cases. Orthodoxy I’m not convinced. Just here, in this forum, we can ask an LDS person one question and receive different answers from each person.

I suppose it depends on what you ask them. Obviously, I’m a highly unorthodox Mormon, but not yet an apostate Mormon. I can imagine the sorts of “tough” questions that Catholics might ask would get different responses. But there is a core of Mormon doctrine that, when examined through simple questions, will produce very standard answers from Mormons. Our language is very “Mormon” because of this effort to standardize on a doctrinal orthodoxy in Mormonism.

Orthodoxy means “right belief”. You can’t say this here:
And then say this:
You’ve just negated orthodoxy with that statement alone.

True, but you have to understand that the Mormon doesn’t view the the Orthodox as orthodox, but as heterodox, see? According to the Mormon’s “right belief,” the Orthodox are apostate, and “Orthodox” is a proper name rather than a description of reality. It’s a rather fundamental Mormon doctrine, actually; something part of the Mormon orthodoxy if you will: a belief in the apostasy of an original Christian church.

Catholic apologetics is based on Catholic orthodoxy. It is what it is. There are non-orthodox apologists, no doubt, but most well-catechized Catholics will see the heterodox fairly easily and clearly. I can’t say I see this with Mormons. Individual Mormons vary so widely in what they believe and have a tendency to hide beliefs they think Christians will view as non-Christian. Which makes it is difficult for non-Mormons to determine what, exactly, is Mormon doctrine. Combined with the fact that Mormon doctrine changes…there is no orthodoxy in Mormonism.

Catholic doctrines can’t change, as Mormon doctrine does from decade to decade, leader to leader. The Catholic faithful themselves, us, don’t tolerate drifting doctrines. Where Mormons view drifting/changing doctrines as acceptable.

Well, I can see what you mean here. While Mormon correlation has brought about a greater sense of Mormon orthodoxy, and will likely continue to do so, I believe these things you point out have reason. With our “open canon”, our teachings tend to change with the times. But, I am a Mormon who makes the heretical (to Mormonism) claim that the Mormon canon has actually been closed through the advent of correlationism in the Church, and even our Prophet is now pretty much bound to the “Standard Works.” At least one authority has said as much.

Whereas Joseph Smith once saw a Church that had as its mission “breaking down all oppression,” our modern leaders tend to have visions of, well, shopping malls I guess. There just isn’t a lot of room in Mormonism anymore for the sort of drifting and changing that there once was.

 

[TexanKnight]

Fine, fine… I have no reason not to believe your facts, just like I have no reason to disbelieve the evidences mounting against a Jewish Exodus from Egypt, the notion of original Christianity, and the need for a God to create anything at all in this absurd Universe. I bet you could point to a corpus of apologia that gives a million great reasons why I’m wrong about those things, just like I could point to a volume of apologia that gives reasons why your facts on Mormonism are just plain silly or irrelevant. We’ll call each others’ evidence “ignoring the facts,” shall we?

There you go again…comparing things that happened in a different world thousands of years ago with things that happened in this country less than 200 years ago. That is always a sign of desperation

You’re not the first to tell Mormons what they worship. It’s called building a straw man. See, it’s way easier to burn down Mormons who worship Joseph Smith than ones who worship Jesus.

I do not tell Mormons what they worship. I talk about worship WHEN I WAS MORMON. That is not straw…that is solid truth.

Ted Bundy is dead and gone and now only exists in the imagination of people who might choose to believe something about him. I believe Ted Bundy was a murderer because I have no reason to deny someone’s evidence on the matter. I have, from long tradition, learned to give Joseph Smith a little more benefit of the doubt when it comes to historical claims, even though I realize there’s little chance that he was what he claimed to be. The point of this thread is what Mormons believe and how they worship, not the facts of their past history which are so easily mangled by the artifices of men. Trust me, we barely remember our own history aright before we’ve finished living it.

Maybe YOU don’t…but we all know Bundy was a murderer (he actually admitted to it) and we know Joseph was a con man and adulterer, among other things.

Oh well, by those standards, Mohammed did worse, as did all those nonsense con men who thought Jesus was divine and gave rise to all the false churches of Christianity; and don’t even get me started on those imposters of the Vedic tradition who can’t even seem to understand that someone has to be right and someone else wrong. One of my Jewish friends assures me that at least his people are recovering from all this nonsense and likes to point out the fact that most of them are now atheist.

Nice deflection. Does not change the facts about Joseph

Oh, now look what you’ve gone and made me say! Typically I’m quite happy when folks believe in their Allahs and Jesuses and Vishnus. And empty Nirvanas. But the world is MUCH better for Catholicism, you know, and for Mormonism and all the rest of them. I love to join with the believers with my own hopes and dreams from time to time. It’s a pity that we have this talk of false churches.

Yes, it is a pity we speak of false churches like the LDS Church.

Yeah, I know Mormons who have that same type of goal on Mormon sites. Only somehow their truth looks different than yours, and they’d like if you’d read history and stop ignoring stuff too. Ah, the arguments of men. We get convinced and will not bend. Such certainty.

I have read the history. The LDS Books and the books written by non LDS. The difference is, I have nothing to hide. Mormons do

Nowhere. Mormons don’t have that anymore. I’m tellin’ ya. It’s not a part of Mormon worship these days. Oh we had it in the past? I don’t care. I don’t do the blood oath thing. Never did.

Does not change the fact that it was taught and practiced…and is totally not from God.

Alas, my murderous forebears. Massacres and strong, unbending belief seem to have a curious affinity, do they not?

Dunno…have not seen a Massacre like MMM in the last 200 yars except at 9/11…wow…MMM also happened on 9/11…I KNOW you are not talking about things that happened in different world hundreds and hundreds of years ago…you seem way to smart for THAT tired tactic…

.

 

[pmccombs]

There you go again…comparing things that happened in a different world thousands of years ago with things that happened in this country less than 200 years ago. That is always a sign of desperation

I wasn’t aware of any expiration date on the evidence I suggested, nor that the “otherness” of the world in that era would have had anything at all to do with what it reveals about the period. Allow me to enter into the Certainty Mode that you prefer to operate in: You have inescapable evidence that Joseph Smith was a fraud. Acknowledged. In a similar manner, it has been proven beyond doubt (I don’t doubt it!) that the Old Testament is a clear Persian-era fabrication and that there was never any original Christian church. This evidence is “conclusive,” to use one anthropologists words. And, by the way, the Universe is still developing to this day, and I know at least one physicist with a working model that demonstrates how extreme organic complexity arises spontaneously from simple building blocks, no God needed for any advanced creation.

So, you have bulletproof evidence that kills Mormonism, and I have bulletproof evidence that kills all religion. Our evidences should get together and throw a religion-killing party, but noooo, you want them to be enemies. My evidence isn’t good enough because some of it has to do with the distant, mysterious past. So what?

I think it was was the historian, David Hackett Fisher (or maybe it was McCullough), who once said that George Washington’s America was closer to Pharaoh’s Egypt than modern Modern America is to our own colonial days. The world was very different 200 years ago. Yet you also insist on comparing those things from an early American religion to Mormonism today. Desperation?

I do not tell Mormons what they worship. I talk about worship WHEN I WAS MORMON. That is not straw…that is solid truth.

Oh, right. Now, let me tell you about the ex-Catholic in my Elder’s Quorum who claims he was once an apostate Saint/Idol worshiper who belonged to a church that corrupted its own scripture. That’s was his worship WHEN HE WAS A CATHOLIC! Right? That’s where I can get an accurate picture of a church’s worship? From it’s ex members who have come to hate it?

I have a news flash for you about attrition. Organizations like churches are abstractions that exist predominantly in our minds. When we leave these organizations, it’s because the way they exist in our mind has changed. Suddenly you see something new that you didn’t see before. You believe something that you didn’t believe before, and you quit. Mormons who suddenly see that they are followers of that fraud, Joseph Smith, instead of Jesus Christ (like they thought!) leave the church. They listen to some source that is telling them what they really believe, and they begin to believe it. No faithful Mormon today believes that Joseph Smith is central to his Mormon worship. It’s nonsense. Joseph Smith is an instrumental and honored prophet of Mormonism; we don’t consider ourselves worshipers of him. Those who do, should quit Mormonism and become Catholic. Or something.

Nice deflection. Does not change the facts about Joseph

Oh, I’ve already acknowledged your facts about Joseph. Quite the scoundrel.

Yes, it is a pity we speak of false churches like the LDS Church.

Hey, I didn’t start this thread. I wash my hands of it.

I have read the history. The LDS Books and the books written by non LDS. The difference is, I have nothing to hide. Mormons do

No I don’t. My church is pile of nonsense, and I love it. Did you hear that, Dan Peterson, chiefest of Mormon apologists? I know you’re omnipresent. Come and get me! I’ve blown the Mormon Cover.

Does not change the fact that it was taught and practiced…and is totally not from God.

No argument here. Most all Mormons don’t believe that, though. I’m just giving you the Mormon perspective, since this is a thread about Mormon worship.

Dunno…have not seen a Massacre like MMM in the last 200 yars except at 9/11…wow…MMM also happened on 9/11…I KNOW you are not talking about things that happened in different world hundreds and hundreds of years ago…you seem way to smart for THAT tired tactic…

Oh, that’s right. People with strong, unbending beliefs of any kind stopped killing each other in these modern times, except those Mormons were doing it 200 years ago and that’s pretty lately. No other recent belief-induced massacres in the last 200-years at all! Putting the blinders on… moving along…

Another bit of news for you: We are cruel to each other when we become certain of ourselves and our own rightness. It’s the source of all strife in the whole world.

 

[RebeccaJ]

pmccombs - in all honesty, I see Mormonism drifting closer and closer to Christian truths. The more they want to be viewed as Christians, the more they change towards accepting Christian truths. They are far, far from us still, but I see there is this benefit to their changing beliefs.

BTW, Mormons are far removed from believing in the Holy Trinity. Until they can understand there is a difference of nature between Creator and created, they will never understand the One God of Christianity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 

[RebeccaJ]

I suppose it depends on what you ask them. Obviously, I’m a highly unorthodox Mormon, but not yet an apostate Mormon.

You are evidence for orthopraxy. As long as you keep your views to yourself and don’t go teaching them in a Mormon setting, you can believe (or not believe) what you like, and remain Mormon.

You are also evidence of the Mormon propensity to firing up one’s own church. You’re just a step away!

 

[LittleSoldier]

Well spoken. Then, let us make peace! In all honesty, your comments have been among the least uncharitable I have found in this thread.

Yes! Let us make peace! Thank you for understanding. I applaud you.

 

[LittleSoldier]

Matthew 16:18 reads, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”

This is the way in which Mormons reason their church was founded by God: “Thou art Joseph, and upon this rock I will build my church in the Latter Days”.

Is that quoted (or paraphrased) in the Book of Mormon? I had a copy once but I lost it.

 

[LittleSoldier]

In my opinion, from reading this thread, I think we all would be wise to learn on how to be persuasive in gathering people closer to God.

Being charitable, knowledgeable, and humble would be the first steps.

Amen. But please remember that we are only mortal human beings and we fail, sometimes horrendously. I was never a Mormon and my dealings with Mormons have been few and far between. Some of my remarks may be construed as uncharitable when they are really honest questions. I’m also dealing with an anti-Catholic on another forum and I’m trying very hard but I admit that a little of what I am going through may show up on this forum (I hope not).

But I read the comments in another thread, here on CAF, that was closed and locked by the moderator after only two pages. I was shocked at the lack of charity shown by Catholics. Nobody should say what they said. To anyone! I was embarrassed and ashamed, even though I didn’t write those comments and never would.

There is room for disagreement, for defending the Church (as we should all do as we are members of the Church Militant), and for ex-Mormons to explain why they left the Mormon Church. Unfortunately it seems that all Mormon Threads become general threads on Mormonism and aren’t restricted to the topic as identified by the Thread Title and the OP. I am guilty of not even bothering to check the Thread Title or read the OP before I posted. I hope I don’t make that mistake again.

I might have charity (I wish I had more); my knowledge of Mormonism is pathetic, and I am definitely the least of Jesus’ brethren and so I suppose I am humble but my comments may not reflect that.

We should also understand that this is an imperfect way in which to communicate. We have no body language, there are no inflections in our speech, and almost anything can be read as sarcastic, rude, and cruel. The emoticons don’t usually help as their use can be misconstrued, also. That “cool” emoticon was used in many posts directed at me and it was used in a cruel manner (fortunately that forum member and I became good friends before he was banned and I’m not putting the blame on him; I was very uncharitable to him).

Maybe it would help if we tried to be charitable and if we read others’ posts with the assumption that they are at least trying to be charitable.

Please excuse my wordy response; it just feels so good to be able to write something that will be read by people who are mostly not anti-Catholic.

 

[LittleSoldier]

No, not me personally. I consider both the Bible and Book of Mormon, along with many other scriptures, as worthy religious texts that one might learn much from. However, Mormons are taught that the Book of Mormon, translated by the gift of God for the last days, is the most correct of any book on earth. I know intelligent Mormons who are amazed at the Book of Mormon and think that it is good evidence for the divine calling of Joseph Smith; and there are indeed some (although I suspect a minority) of Mormons who consider the Book of Mormon superior to the Bible. In general, in spite of the LDS claim of the correctness of the Book of Mormon, Mormons hold the Old and New Testaments on equal footing with the entire Mormon canon (so long as the King James Version is used). Joseph Smith did produce what we call the “Inspired” version of the Bible which was meant to clarify some doctrines, but interestingly, this version is not used much by Mormons at all and exists now primarily as footnotes in the LDS correlated version of the King James bible.

Why the King James Version? I was surprised to read that.

 

[TexanKnight]

I wasn’t aware of any expiration date on the evidence I suggested,

Really? I do not believe you are as obtuse as one must be to not realize the differences in what was acceptable and considered “right” in 400 B.C. (for example) in the Middle East and 1800s in the United States. In the event I am mistaken, please accept my apologies.

Allow me to enter into the Certainty Mode that you prefer to operate in:

Funny thing…I always believed right and wrong was pretty cut and dried. Oh, there is the occasional grey area, but, for the most part, right and wrong is pretty much “certain” The only people who stay away from that are people who need the shades of gray to justify their existence.

You have inescapable evidence that Joseph Smith was a fraud.

So do you

it has been proven beyond doubt (I don’t doubt it!) that the Old Testament is a clear Persian-era fabrication and that there was never any original Christian church. This evidence is “conclusive,”

ok. I have not seen the evidence, so I can’t comment. That is where we differ. You have seen the JS evidence, but choose to live in the gray so as to accept it.

So, you have bulletproof evidence that kills Mormonism, and I have bulletproof evidence that kills all religion.

You try to make a point using a poor basis for the example. We have posted, ad nauseum, the proof regarding Joseph Smith. So, you have seen it, or choose to ignore it. You have not provided ANY evidence of your allegation. So, where I, and others, have produced (again, ad nauseum), bulletproof evidence, you have typed a paragraph and declared us equal. It does not work that way. Your example fails.

I think it was was the historian, who once said that George Washington’s America was closer to Pharaoh’s Egypt than modern Modern America is to our own colonial days. The world was very different 200 years ago. Yet you also insist on comparing those things from an early American religion to Mormonism today. Desperation?

Again, a failed comparison. Where you try to compare 1830s America to the middle ages in Europe and the Old Testament times in the middle east, I simply show what the alleged prophets did and said less than 200 years ago. What they did then was considered wrong, and it is STILL considered wrong, hence the LDS whitewashing of history. Again, you have failed.

Oh, right. Now, let me tell you about the ex-Catholic in my Elder’s Quorum who claims he was once an apostate Saint/Idol worshiper who belonged to a church that corrupted its own scripture. That’s was his worship WHEN HE WAS A CATHOLIC! That’s where I can get an accurate picture of a church’s worship? From it’s ex members who have come to hate it?

Heresay and not persuasive. I speak of my own experience. You rely on an alleged comment from someone who could well be a made-up person. Again, you have failed.

Organizations like churches are abstractions that exist predominantly in our minds. When we leave these organizations, it’s because the way they exist in our mind has changed. You believe something that you didn’t believe before, and you quit. Mormons who suddenly see that they are followers of that fraud, Joseph Smith, instead of Jesus Christ leave the church. They listen to some source that is telling them what they really believe, No faithful Mormon today believes that Joseph Smith is central to his Mormon worship… Joseph Smith is an honored prophet of Mormonism; we don’t consider ourselves worshipers of him.

Wrong. On so many levels. I did not listen to what others had to say. I left because I studiied. I studied LDS History and the hidden and past doctrines. I realized LDS stood for stuff I had NEVER believed in. So, you are wrong. Again. And you can deny how central Joseph is to the faith, but even BY stated that no man could get to heaven unless Joseph approved…not Jesus…Joseph. Joseph stated he had done more for the Church than even Jesus. Deny it, whitewash it, spin it. We know better. On Testimony Sunday, it comes out like this after each testimony "I know the Church is true. I know Joseph Smith was a prophet and we have a prophet today on the earth. I know the Book of Morrmon is the Word of God. I bear my testimony in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Seems Joseph is pretty central…

Oh, I’ve already acknowledged your facts about Joseph. Quite the scoundrel.

Yes. He was

Hey, I didn’t start this thread. I wash my hands of it.

Wash away

No I don’t. My church is pile of nonsense, and I love it. Did you hear that, Dan Peterson, chiefest of Mormon apologists? I know you’re omnipresent. Come and get me! I’ve blown the Mormon Cover.

You are not all “Mormons” and “Mormons” truly do.

No argument here. Most all Mormons don’t believe that, though. I’m just giving you the Mormon perspective, since this is a thread about Mormon worship.

Really? So they spout stuff over and over in the temple they do not believe? Pretty hypocritical…

Oh, that’s right. People with strong, unbending beliefs of any kind stopped killing each other in these modern times, except those Mormons were doing it 200 years ago and that’s pretty lately. No other recent belief-induced massacres in the last 200-years at all! Putting the blinders on… moving along…

Red Herring. Is that all you got?

Another bit of news for you: We are cruel to each other when we become certain of ourselves and our own rightness. It’s the source of all strife in the whole world.

Speak for yourself. I am rarely, if ever, cruel. I am almost always certain.

 

[pmccombs]

Is that quoted (or paraphrased) in the Book of Mormon? I had a copy once but I lost it.

Oh, maybe. I’m kind of a bad Mormon in that regard; I haven’t read my Book of Mormon for a few weeks now. I just got the facsimile copy of the 1830 version to try out.

 

[pmccombs]

Speak for yourself. I am rarely, if ever, cruel. I am almost always certain.

Hey, TexanKnight. I think our little argument is ripe for the moderation bit bucket by now. What say you?

I don’t want leave this argument with any enmity, though. So let me say “sorry” for any meanness I might have come across with, and also say that I highly admire Catholics and Catholicism.

 

[TexanKnight]

Hey, TexanKnight. I think our little argument is ripe for the moderation bit bucket by now. What say you?

I don’t want leave this argument with any enmity, though. So let me say “sorry” for any meanness I might have come across with, and also say that I highly admire Catholics and Catholicism.

Your call. I hardly ever post unless it is responding to a Mormon…

As for any bad feelings, I never have them. Really. There was never any anger or ill will in my heart as I proclaim the truth as commanded by Christ. I truly admire the LDS Church and, as I stated, have incredibly fond memories of my time as a Mormon, especially as a missionary. I know it is cliche’. but two of my best friends are LDS.

I widh you and yours a great and blessed Memorial Day. Please do not forget the real meaning of the day. We Former Army guys appreciate the day and what it stands for.

 

[pmccombs]

pmccombs - in all honesty, I see Mormonism drifting closer and closer to Christian truths. The more they want to be viewed as Christians, the more they change towards accepting Christian truths. They are far, far from us still, but I see there is this benefit to their changing beliefs.

BTW, Mormons are far removed from believing in the Holy Trinity. Until they can understand there is a difference of nature between Creator and created, they will never understand the One God of Christianity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Yes, I understand your point about “Creator and created.” John Milbank calls it the “univocity of being.” Maybe he didn’t coin the term, but I like to read his “Radical Orthodoxy” because it’s plain brilliant. I don’t know how Catholics regard Radical Orthodoxy, and I suppose its a digression from the topic anyway… But, yeah.

 

[pmccombs]

Why the King James Version? I was surprised to read that.

I probably can’t give a really good response on the KJV, other than that’s what Joseph Smith had and we consider it a good translation. Well, I’ve tried other versions, and some are more clear. But I really love the language of the KJV. It just has a very reverent feeling to it, in my mind.

 

[Miriam1947]

I probably can’t give a really good response on the KJV, other than that’s what Joseph Smith had and we consider it a good translation. Well, I’ve tried other versions, and some are more clear. But I really love the language of the KJV. It just has a very reverent feeling to it, in my mind.

You might also like the Douay-Rheims Bible. It has the language of the KJV and is my favorite version.

I grew up with the King James version and this version feels very familiar to me.

It does have all those other books though