I see. It depends upon what 'is" is.
Coming from Bill Clinton, discussion of what ‘is’ means is not very interesting. Coming from he Fathers of the Church, it is decisive, and indeed the real difficulties involved in understanding being cannot be shrugged off. It is neither petty nor evasive.
The problem is, Theosis, that our view of the Trinity is pretty simple, and is precisely as described in those very first missionary lessons. There isn’t any wiggling around; when Joseph Smith described two Personages standing side by side, that’s pretty much it. That’s what we believe. It’s laid right out there…
And to claim that we are attempting to decieve anybody about it is to redefine words to screeching levels. We don’t pull any punches with it, y’know.
Actually, your view of the trinity is not simple. It looks easier to understand, but ease in understanding is not the same as simplicity. In reality, your theology is substantially more complex, and far more vaguely defined than ours.
It is often the case that a careful and complete description of a simple object is itself far more complex than a object being described. Take the case of a point in geometry, It is essentially simple, and Euclid brilliantly defined it as “that which has no part.” Anyone who has thought about points quickly sees the truth of Euclid’s definition, because it preceeds from the simple thought. But to actually describe that thought to a person who has not already understood a point requires a bit more intricacy, and specifications need to be added. Further, even for someone who does understand a point, there can be a deepening understanding of the idea. For instance, it is helpful to observe that “part” does not only refer to physical divisions, but conceptual and formal divisions: a point has no sides, no orientation to any direction, and cannot be considered according to multiple rationales.
I just spent a paragraoh talking points. Yet which is more complicated, a point or the paragraph? In the same way, the Trinity is far simpler than the terms we use to explain it, but like a point, the object we are describing is utterly simple, and discoverable with a single act of apprehension, which ultimately dervies not from explaining it, but from beholding it. It is not the complexity but the profundity of the idea that makes it difficult. Once you’ve beheld it, you have no more questions. The difference of course, it that God and a piont are simple for opposite reasons, one because it is infinitesimal, the other becasue he is infinite. That is why explaining God tends to require more paragraphs.
By contrast, I have absolutely no idea what to make of the Mormon Godhead, becasue Mormonism has no clear teaching on what it means for the three to be one. The most narrow account is “one in purpose,” yet what does purpose mean here? Does it mean that God is good because of an end he serves outside of himself? Does he therefore derive his goodness from the lower beings (us) that he serves? Or does “purpose” simply mean agreement in wills without necessary reference to specific objects? These questions might be answerable just by defining the terms, yet where does Mormon teaching explain which of these two senses of “purpose” is intended?
Alternatively, Mormonism also offers a broader account of the oneness of the Godhead: the members are one in absolutely everything except being. This explains less that it appears to, and it cannot be strictly true because the members do not have the same wives, nor do they have common properties because the Holy Ghost has no fleshly body, which gives him some powers that the other members lack. On that basis alone, the broad account of their oneness needs
some qualification, yet the Mormon Church does not provide any qulaifcations to sort it out and make this teaching intelligible.
Apart from this, there is the problem of understanding the physical nature of God. It is easy to understand *that *he is a material, but *what *is a material body anyway? How do God’s kidneys work? Does his spirit body have DNA? How is a person constituted from physical mechanisms? I mean these questions in dead earnest. If I thought that human and divine nature were the same in species, and that this species had a purely material nature, I would want to know the answers urgently. Seeing God’s outward, physical appearance would not satisfy my hunger to know.
don’t pretend
But you have been a little too negative in the past about mormonism. And you still are very negative and this seems to negate your opinions about mormonism. Hard to take a poster seriously who has constantly ripped into a faith without ever saying a positive word about that faith.
). A few articles state that Archbishop Sobrinho stated that the stepfather did not incur an automatic excommunication because canon law does not include rape as something that incurs automatic excommunication. A number of news articles also state that Father Sobrinho received criticism from many because he said (not verbatim) that abortion is a worse crime than rape (he is also quoted as saying that abortion is more serious than killing an adult, which I agree with as well).