Mormon Exaltation in Light of Theosis

[Stephen168]

Perhaps you misunderstood me.

You’ve repeated the same message for years, so it is unlikely that I misunderstood you. But anything is possible.

Maybe this will help.
St. Peter wrote and spoke many truths. He received revelation from God. But Peter was not a systematic theologian. He offered truth as he received it from God, but he did not make explicit what “partake of the divine nature” means.
Thomas Aquinas did not receive public revelation from God. He was a systematic theologian. He took the truths received from God by folks who were inspired and fit them together into as coherent of a whole as he was able.
Joseph Smith was what St. Peter was.
Blake Ostler is what Thomas Aquinas was.
I point to Ostler to suggest that Ostler’s interpretations of Joseph Smith’s revelations are to be preferred to your interpretations of Joseph Smith’s revelations. After all Ostler is a believer and is known as a faithful thinker by conservative and liberal LDS. You are a non-believer and a critic. And I might add, you are a critic who presents a version of Mormonism that I often cannot recognize as connected with what I have experienced in my 20 years as a member. If you cannot properly define my beliefs you cannot adequately critique my beliefs. Aquinas was a master at defining the criticism with which he disagreed. He presented it cogently and powerfully THEN he addressed it. You IMO pound you fist and say “No, Mormonism believes this ridiculous thing and this thing is ridiculous.” Usually you lose me on the first half of this statement because I reject the “ridiculous thing” from long before I ever heard you advocate it.

And over the years you repeat the same assumptions which I reject.
-Christianity was founded by Peter.
-Aquinas represents official Catholic Church.
-Blake Olster represents official Mormon teaching.

While you might equate Ostler to Aquinas, Aquinas provided reason for Christian beliefs. Olster is changing Mormon belief to make it reasonable; rejecting Joseph Smith. Much of Aquinas’ reasoning has been accepted by the Catholic Church. I know the Mormon Church has rejected Joseph Smith’s teaching on the Book of Mormon, but Has Ostler’s reasoning been accepted by the Mormon prophet?
While my understanding of Mormonism is over 40 years old, and I know it has changed on many issues like rejecting of the priesthood ban, allowing abortion, what the Book of Mormon is, and allowing the consumption of caffeine. I have not been show any official Mormon literatures which now rejects Joseph Smith’s teaching on exaltation and who God is.

BTW, your reluctance to read anything is evident in you suggesting that Gazelem is referring to something by Ostler. Gazelem is pointing to an article by David Paulsen. You would know this if you looked, but it would seem for you there is no need to listen to what intelligent LDS claim is LDS belief.

I was commenting on Gazelem’s thesis statement which I reject for the reasons described above. Mormon belief is ever changing while Catholic belief is not, therefore as Mormonism and Christianity move closer together, it is Mormonism which is moving.

 

[TOmNossor]

You’ve repeated the same message for years, so it is unlikely that I misunderstood you. But anything is possible.

Yes, I do agree with you here. It is not likely you do not understand the broad strokes of what I am saying. It is instead that you insist on defining Mormonism the way you think it should be defined and do not let real LDS move you from the declaration that you are the authority on how to read Joseph Smith not them.
Of course some of the below seems to beg for correction. If not to remove misunderstanding from you, instead to prevent such a false image of my church from holding sway among those who might mistake what you claim for what LDS believe.

-Christianity was founded by Peter.

I claim Christianity was founded by God, but I claim that Peter was God’s church leader on earth when Christ no longer walked the earth. Since I do not regularly claim Christ was a prophet, I might say Peter was foundational in this role.

-Aquinas represents official Catholic Church.

No, but when Stephen and Aquinas disagree, in the absence of very compelling reasons to reject what Aquinas has put forth, I go with Aquinas. Who is a Saint and a Doctor of the Church. And while I probably do place too much emphasis upon Aquinas it is because I cannot find a systematic exposition of Catholicism that compares. The CCC does not address the objections Aquinas addresses. In the broad strokes, “God love us.” “Christ died for our sins.” “Through Him we can live again with God.” …. these we all agree upon. It is in the less important particulars were we frequently spend our time on this board. IMO Aquinas is the best source for a Catholic understanding of these.

-Blake Olster represents official Mormon teaching.

As I said above, Blake Ostler’s interpretation of the teachings of the CoJCoLDS is to be preferred to Stephen’s. You do not present what my church teaches, but what you wish it did (or think it did/does) so you can show it is false.

I was commenting on Gazelem’s thesis statement which I reject for the reasons described above. Mormon belief is ever changing while Catholic belief is not, therefore as Mormonism and Christianity move closer together, it is Mormonism which is moving.

I acknowledge that Mormonism changes via continuing revelation AND better understanding of our foundational revelations (starting with the Bible and continuing through the BOM and D&C and PGP).
You must acknowledge that Catholicism changes even if you call the change “development,” deny continued revelation, claim the change is practice only not truth, and many other things.
Much of Paulsen’s article dealt with large swaths of Protestantism and tiny pockets of Catholicism. In defining what I would believe where I to be Catholic, I do not put much weight on the “tiny pockets.”

The post Vatican II change in extreme unction is very directly however a change from where Catholicism was before Vatican II and today. Read my above link. You might say this is just a change in practice and/or it is return to how it was once done.
The prevalence of CCC#460 as part of the consciousness of numerous Catholics is a change from when I was a Catholic before the modern CCC was written. The Baltimore Cathecism (a document as synonymous to the CCC as any available in English, but still much less important than the current CCC) has nothing like CCC#460. While I would say the teaching in CCC#460 have been present within the Catholic Church throughout history, they were so deemphasized that most Catholics through most of the 20th century and for many centuries before would scream “blasphemy” at the words of CCC#460. You might say this is just a change in emphasis or knowledge, but not a change in doctrine.
Finally, there is little doubt that doctrine developed a great deal during the first 4 centuries of the church and beyond. Development is another word for change so, the Catholic Church changed doctrines even if you call it development, “organic development” (acorn into oak), or some other word/words.
Charity, TOm

 

[IgnatianPhilo]

If God is not static, seemingly ever moving towards eternal perfection, who’s to say such a state will be denied to those God begets with his spiritual wife? If at any point man can be as perfect as God once was in Mormon theology then it seems that we have for all intention purposes become equal with God since at any given point you will have the power and ability of God which is seemingly limitless (after all what can’t God do now that he can do fifty years from now?). You might say respect is still owed to God and that respect and honour is necessary, but it seems like it’s only the respect owed by one like a Son or Daughter, but they have become everything their Father and Mother are in essence.

As far as seeming, while it may be possible that those who taught God was a physical being were in the majority, the lack of resources in this area does not automatically make it as plausible as the traditional Christian view being the majority. In the absence of such records, in the absence of a sophisticated defence for God being material I am able to think that such a view was the minority. Do we have any references to articulated defences of works detailing an argument for God being a material being? If what you say is true I am sure there would have been sophisticated and intelligent materialists able to defend such a position, but I am unaware of such works and it’s not as if we don’t know about works contrary to the Christian faith through the patristics who make reference to works which attacked the faith or were thought heretical. Origen might have accused Melito of believing God material but I don’t think Melito ever made a theological treatise in defence of that position.

That being said, even if there were such people in the church that doesn’t go on to prove that the position is correct or apostolic. We know there were plenty of spiritualists, people who rejected the material completely and believed Jesus to be pure spirit and thus would subsequently free us of material bonds. They were far louder and numerous (given the response of the fathers) yet none of us believe they reflected the apostolic tradition, even though they were the loudest heretics. Rather my belief in the traditional doctrine is in this, that the church reflecting over the centuries never abandoned that theosis language with regards to the spirit and the body, despite later definitions of God being utterly immaterial and unapproachable. This is significant because of the complete lack of Gnostics doing so and as far as I can see the total inexistence of such a position on the materialists(those who believed God to be flesh). We see the tradition in Christianity not abandoning its apostolic origin and the language of the fathers before it, but fully embracing it and clarifying it so that others might understand. This is only natural and if there was a lack of revelation necessary to correct such errors, God should have provided prophets, which he did not apparently.
As for expecting Saint Monica, most likely not educated in theology but rather having a simple and pious faith to educate her son on these matters, I don’t think that’s reasonable.

As far as creation ex nihilo being originally gnostic. I don’t know how we can suppose that Christianity borrowed this idea from the Gnostics who held at their core the material world was created by the demiurge and not the true God. Christians insisted this world was created by the true God and is not fundamentally evil. It seems the early patristics were not too concerned with the question whether or not the universe was created from nothing but focused on the narrative itself, explaining the days of creation within genesis. Certainty if you can’t demonstrate the decisive origin of ex nihilo in gnostic thought directly connecting to Christianity then it will be impossible for you to prove the platonic idea of an eternal material substance being the Orthodox view of the early church.

 

[Stephen168]

To the point of this thread:

While you might equate Ostler to Aquinas, Aquinas provided reason for Christian beliefs. Olster is changing Mormon belief to make it reasonable; rejecting Joseph Smith. Much of Aquinas’ reasoning has been accepted by the Catholic Church. I know the Mormon Church has rejected Joseph Smith’s teaching on the Book of Mormon, but** Has Ostler’s reasoning been accepted by the Mormon prophet?**

While my understanding of Mormonism is over 40 years old, and I know it has changed on many issues like rejecting of the priesthood ban, allowing abortion, what the Book of Mormon is, and allowing the consumption of caffeine. I have not been shown any official Mormon literatures which now rejects Joseph Smith’s teaching on exaltation and who God is.

We get:

Catholicism…Catholic…Catholicism…Catholicism…Catholic…Catholicism…Catholics…Catholic…Catholic Church…Catholics…Catholic Church…

While you quickly cherry picked quotes from the ECFs, you seem to be having trouble with proving that the teaching of the Mormon prophets is the same teaching as the Early Church.

 

[KathleenGee]

Tom,

I appreciate always your consistency of civility and reciprocity here on CAF. Thank you.

Again, we also have to look at St. Paul, that anyone who would change even one word of Scripture would be declared anathema.

If there is anything ‘godly’ within us that is truly Christlike, it is not aspiring to become gods…isn’t that the first great temptation given to Eve…to become as gods?

The counterpoint is Christ and His teaching and example. And that is we are to become servants, not gods.

I think you are look at theosis from the Mormon stance instead of the ECF. I remember reading from ‘Deseret News’ about the 'miracle that the ECF writings were proving Joseph Smith right regarding theosis and we becoming gods.

We become adopted children at baptism. We must pick up our cross and follow Him every day and our strength not from ourselves but from the Living Word of God Made Flesh…the Word and Eucharist, the Eucharist the means to gaining eternal life.

I put this latter out to you because you are a former Catholic.

In CCC460, the one used by Mormons to say even that Catholic Church says we become gods, they don’t look at the footnotes…and it is in doing the Lord’s will and living by His being within us, we dead to ourselves.

To become truly children of God, adopted sons and daughters, as St. Michael said, ‘Who is like unto God!’ – it is about dying to our selves. So how can we assume to become gods when to live in Christ, He is calling us to personal death of our own ego.

 

[Tannhauser_1509]

While I believe God was solely able to “bara” from unformed matter that which we call matter, and while I believe God as “more intelligent than they all” (meaning more intelligent that the collective sum of all intelligences) and is thus UNIQUELY able to bring about men and lift us to what He is Himself; I can still appreciate the reluctance to reject creation ex nihilo and thereby constrain ones concept of God. The concept of God that claims He is not the sole eternality in the universe NECESSARILY limits God’s absolute sovereignty. I do not think it is possible to exalt God too much so if I did not think creation ex nihilo came with too much baggage, I would be tempted to look for a way to believe it. So, let me just applaud you in this. Being a “Catholic Candidate” is a wonderful thing.

While I appreciate where we were able to connect on these issues, I’m still straining to understand why creatio ex materia is something to which you choose to cling. Given scientists’ discoveries about cosmology in the last century, the consensus is clear: the universe came from nothing; it had a beginning. Maybe ex nihilo does carry baggage (like not being able remotely to begin to comprehend this), but Catholics plead ignorance on the question the same as cosmologists. The simple fact is that God creating out of nothing gives His uniqueness absolute justice. But I’ll be honest: I derive this belief largely from faith.

Even if, as you stated, God could “bara” from unformed matter, matter was still God’s master in the beginning. If God was truly present in the beginning, He didn’t spring out of unformed matter. If He did spring out of unformed matter, it was something other than God; probably more matter. And I’m still wondering whom to worship.

 

[TOmNossor]

Tom,

I appreciate always your consistency of civility and reciprocity here on CAF. Thank you.

Thank you and back at you!

Again, we also have to look at St. Paul, that anyone who would change even one word of Scripture would be declared anathema.

If there is anything ‘godly’ within us that is truly Christlike, it is not aspiring to become gods…isn’t that the first great temptation given to Eve…to become as gods?

The counterpoint is Christ and His teaching and example. And that is we are to become servants, not gods.

I think you are look at theosis from the Mormon stance instead of the ECF. I remember reading from ‘Deseret News’ about the 'miracle that the ECF writings were proving Joseph Smith right regarding theosis and we becoming gods.

We become adopted children at baptism. We must pick up our cross and follow Him every day and our strength not from ourselves but from the Living Word of God Made Flesh…the Word and Eucharist, the Eucharist the means to gaining eternal life.

I put this latter out to you because you are a former Catholic.

In CCC460, the one used by Mormons to say even that Catholic Church says we become gods, they don’t look at the footnotes…and it is in doing the Lord’s will and living by His being within us, we dead to ourselves.

To become truly children of God, adopted sons and daughters, as St. Michael said, ‘Who is like unto God!’ – it is about dying to our selves. So how can we assume to become gods when to live in Christ, He is calling us to personal death of our own ego.

I have always assumed that the celebration I heard rumored that the Vatican was opening up and it proves Mormonism was true was a product of the deification language in the ECFs. I did not see the Deseret news article that you refer to, but it supports this assumption. And, I might say it is a little overstated.
Most of what I want to say however is that we cannot ASPIRE to be God or gods or … this is the sin of Adam and Eve. To recognize that God invites us to divinity and that through Him we can “see Him as He really is,” that because He partook of our nature we can partake of His nature, that He wishes to lift us up so we like Christ can sit on His throne with Him. This is acknowledging the truth that is “too wonderful for me.” I fail to see how embracing what God says about making men gods is about human aspirations. I can understand how you might assume it is, but there is no logical necessity. Personally, I remain firmly sure that I do not deserve such a fate and likewise content to let God’s will be done. Where I asked to pick 100 folks I was most sure would to “see Him as He is,” I would not be part of the list. If God lifts me up one day it will not be because of my merits. But this does not change the certainty that I have that He does lift up humans like this. Not because I feel inside me that I deserve it, but because all I know of God suggests He can and He will.
If you ask my son if he would like to be like me, I expect he would say “yes and no.” Where I to be much more than I am, perhaps he would say unquailingly “yes.” I desire for my son and daughter to be better than I am. In my feeble way I have provided for them that I might lift them up and hopefully catapult them to being better than I ever was. At 18 my son is far ahead of me. But His desire to be like me (or like a more perfect version of me) is not an aspiration for greatness, but a desire to be all I want him to be. If I an evil man can give him a fish, surely God is who is good (and omnipotent) can give Him (and me) even more.
To believe God is good and omnipotent and desires to give us the life that He enjoys is to ascribe to God a great-making property without which He would not really be God. It has nothing to do with human aspirations.
Charity, TOm

 

[TOmNossor]

While I appreciate where we were able to connect on these issues, I’m still straining to understand why creatio ex materia is something to which you choose to cling. Given scientists’ discoveries about cosmology in the last century, the consensus is clear: the universe came from nothing; it had a beginning. Maybe ex nihilo does carry baggage (like not being able remotely to begin to comprehend this), but Catholics plead ignorance on the question the same as cosmologists. The simple fact is that God creating out of nothing gives His uniqueness absolute justice. But I’ll be honest: I derive this belief largely from faith.

Even if, as you stated, God could “bara” from unformed matter, matter was still God’s master in the beginning. If God was truly present in the beginning, He didn’t spring out of unformed matter. If He did spring out of unformed matter, it was something other than God; probably more matter. And I’m still wondering whom to worship.

Gavin,
I might implore you to not put too much emphasis upon man made theories of the universe (even theories like the Big Bang that were originated by a Christian). Where I to ignore this imploration I might say that modern cosmology now recognizes that most of the “matter” in the universe is precisely like the “unformed matter” I claim God used to create (they call it “dark matter” perhaps you have heard of it). But, such things are for Sunday afternoons after too much whiskey (oh, and I don’t drink).
As a LDS, I would never say that God was created from unformed matter by anything. He did not “spring forth” but was eternal. The flesh and bone and blood that we call God the Son was truly God the Son’s body. The flesh and bone that God the Son still possesses is God the Son’s resurrected body. Both of these I think Catholics can agree with. That being said, God the Son did not originate when God the Son had a body. What was God the Son before God the Son became flesh and bone was and is eternal just like the Holy Spirit and just like the eternal God the Father. The eternal existence of unformed matter does not cause God because God existed eternally.
The concession I am making is not that God is caused. I am merely acknowledging that if my read of scripture and history is correct and the ancient view embraced by Justin Martyr and Christians and Jews before him is correct, than God did not create ex nihilo. This means that unlike the modern concept of God within Catholicism, God existed with other co-eternals and any creation or lack of creation would not change this “past necessity.” God in my view created knowing that there were numerous eternal intelligences that He could lift up to become like Him. His love for that which was us before we became His spirit children and before we became children of flesh and bones AFFECTED God and He choose to create. God was never all alone with nothing but God and thus His freedom was constrained by this truth. God was free to not create, to leave us as we were. To create in a way to enslave us. To do any one of a million things. But because of His love for what actually was, He created to lift us to be what He is Himself. There is a beauty in this, but the God who created ex nihilo did not have any consideration for those who were co-eternal with Him as there was no one and nothing.
The above hints at a secondary reason I reject creation ex nihilo (it is not the “unformed matter” that I find important, it is the eternal intelligences). A Catholic scholar named Michael Alameda argued that libertarian free will is incompatible with creation ex nihilo and I lean towards agreeing. I also think the problem of evil can be pushed around a few corners and into a few rat holes within a creation ex nihilo framework, but is unsolvable. All that being said, may I believe truth even if I cannot solve all the problems that truth produces via my fallible intellect. I think there are many reasons to reject Creation ex nihilo, but one of the strongest is that I believe the CoJCoLDS is a restoration of God’s truth and is led by a prophet of God who receives revelation. The D&C seems to reject creation ex nihilo as do many extra scriptural writings.

Charity, TOm

 

[Tannhauser_1509]

Gavin,
I might implore you to not put too much emphasis upon man made theories of the universe (even theories like the Big Bang that were originated by a Christian). Where I to ignore this imploration I might say that modern cosmology now recognizes that most of the “matter” in the universe is precisely like the “unformed matter” I claim God used to create (they call it “dark matter” perhaps you have heard of it). But, such things are for Sunday afternoons after too much whiskey (oh, and I don’t drink).
As a LDS, I would never say that God was created from unformed matter by anything. He did not “spring forth” but was eternal. The flesh and bone and blood that we call God the Son was truly God the Son’s body. The flesh and bone that God the Son still possesses is God the Son’s resurrected body. Both of these I think Catholics can agree with. That being said, God the Son did not originate when God the Son had a body. What was God the Son before God the Son became flesh and bone was and is eternal just like the Holy Spirit and just like the eternal God the Father. The eternal existence of unformed matter does not cause God because God existed eternally.
The concession I am making is not that God is caused. I am merely acknowledging that if my read of scripture and history is correct and the ancient view embraced by Justin Martyr and Christians and Jews before him is correct, than God did not create ex nihilo. This means that unlike the modern concept of God within Catholicism, God existed with other co-eternals and any creation or lack of creation would not change this “past necessity.” God in my view created knowing that there were numerous eternal intelligences that He could lift up to become like Him. His love for that which was us before we became His spirit children and before we became children of flesh and bones AFFECTED God and He choose to create. God was never all alone with nothing but God and thus His freedom was constrained by this truth. God was free to not create, to leave us as we were. To create in a way to enslave us. To do any one of a million things. But because of His love for what actually was, He created to lift us to be what He is Himself. There is a beauty in this, but the God who created ex nihilo did not have any consideration for those who were co-eternal with Him as there was no one and nothing.
The above hints at a secondary reason I reject creation ex nihilo (it is not the “unformed matter” that I find important, it is the eternal intelligences). A Catholic scholar named Michael Alameda argued that libertarian free will is incompatible with creation ex nihilo and I lean towards agreeing. I also think the problem of evil can be pushed around a few corners and into a few rat holes within a creation ex nihilo framework, but is unsolvable. All that being said, may I believe truth even if I cannot solve all the problems that truth produces via my fallible intellect. I think there are many reasons to reject Creation ex nihilo, but one of the strongest is that I believe the CoJCoLDS is a restoration of God’s truth and is led by a prophet of God who receives revelation. The D&C seems to reject creation ex nihilo as do many extra scriptural writings.

Charity, TOm

I find this argument highly uncompelling, but as you stated, your prophet has declared it. And that’s usually where the discussion stops.

What would be enormously healthy for LDS cosmology and theology is a concerted effort to consolidate all these frames of thought into a sound volume that articulates the doctrine of eternalism, pluralism and eternal progression so that we can move beyond the polemics, and so that the prophets of the Church can make good use of their office. Until then, it’s your interpretation of vague and contradictory statements of the LDS leadership against the official teaching of the Catholic Church.

 

[TOmNossor]

I find this argument highly uncompelling, but as you stated, your prophet has declared it. And that’s usually where the discussion stops.

What would be enormously healthy for LDS cosmology and theology is a concerted effort to consolidate all these frames of thought into a sound volume that articulates the doctrine of eternalism, pluralism and eternal progression so that we can move beyond the polemics, and so that the prophets of the Church can make good use of their office. Until then, it’s your interpretation of vague and contradictory statements of the LDS leadership against the official teaching of the Catholic Church.

I can believe folks would find creation ex nihilo far more compelling than the doctrine of eternal intelligences. Even Michael Almeida or Alvin Plantinga very possibly (likely) would be solidly on the side of the Creation ex Nihilo as the more compelling position. I am not.
What you find enormously healthy was not completed within the first 200 years of Catholicism. Aquinas’s UNFINISHED summa is probably the closest. Augustine’s writings after 400 years of Christian history gave us something, but Augustine was in the middle of revising when he died. As much as Stephen hates it, Ostler’s 3 (soon to be 4 volume) Exploring Mormon thought is precisely an attempt at what you seek. The problem Stephen has with it is that there are higher authorities than Ostler within the CoJCoLDS. Of course there were higher authorities than Augustine and Aquinas.
I personally believe it is the job of the General Authorities of the CoJCoLDS to receive revelation for the guiding of the church. This IMO is and should be associated with ecclesiastic affairs AND points of emphasis for teaching not the solution to questions we debate here. If one day all LDS followed the council we received 2x per year in General Conference, perhaps there would be time for seeking God’s will on systematic theology. But that day will only come after my death.
Concerning “official teaching of the Catholic Church,” you are ahead in the systematizing of Catholic thought (though 200 years into your history you were much worse off than the CoJCoLDS is today). But, you said that you cannot even determine which side of the “a se” debate is the Catholic side. Why is the Pope calling synods on the family when the ideal family structure is obvious rather than on which side of the “a se” debate is the Catholic side (or are men consubstantial with Christ and if so why cannot they be consubstantial with God the Father). I submit the Pope spends his time on family synods for the same reason that the Prophet spends his time emphasizing one obvious aspect of the gospel or another. We fallen LDS just don’t live our faith and you fallen Catholics don’t live yours. A Catholic who perfectly lived his faith would be a beacon to LDS and Catholic alike IMO (as would a LDS who perfectly lived our faith).
Charity, TOm

 

[Tannhauser_1509]

I can believe folks would find creation ex nihilo far more compelling than the doctrine of eternal intelligences. Even Michael Almeida or Alvin Plantinga very possibly (likely) would be solidly on the side of the Creation ex Nihilo as the more compelling position. I am not.
What you find enormously healthy was not completed within the first 200 years of Catholicism. Aquinas’s UNFINISHED summa is probably the closest. Augustine’s writings after 400 years of Christian history gave us something, but Augustine was in the middle of revising when he died. As much as Stephen hates it, Ostler’s 3 (soon to be 4 volume) Exploring Mormon thought is precisely an attempt at what you seek. The problem Stephen has with it is that there are higher authorities than Ostler within the CoJCoLDS. Of course there were higher authorities than Augustine and Aquinas.
I personally believe it is the job of the General Authorities of the CoJCoLDS to receive revelation for the guiding of the church. This IMO is and should be associated with ecclesiastic affairs AND points of emphasis for teaching not the solution to questions we debate here. If one day all LDS followed the council we received 2x per year in General Conference, perhaps there would be time for seeking God’s will on systematic theology. But that day will only come after my death.
Concerning “official teaching of the Catholic Church,” you are ahead in the systematizing of Catholic thought (though 200 years into your history you were much worse off than the CoJCoLDS is today). But, you said that you cannot even determine which side of the “a se” debate is the Catholic side. Why is the Pope calling synods on the family when the ideal family structure is obvious rather than on which side of the “a se” debate is the Catholic side (or are men consubstantial with Christ and if so why cannot they be consubstantial with God the Father). I submit the Pope spends his time on family synods for the same reason that the Prophet spends his time emphasizing one obvious aspect of the gospel or another. We fallen LDS just don’t live our faith and you fallen Catholics don’t live yours. A Catholic who perfectly lived his faith would be a beacon to LDS and Catholic alike IMO (as would a LDS who perfectly lived our faith).
Charity, TOm

Thank God Jesus promised He’d preserve His Church, so we’d only have to be in theological darkness once.

 

[RebeccaJ]

The post Vatican II change in extreme unction is very directly however a change from where Catholicism was before Vatican II and today. Read my above link. You might say this is just a change in practice and/or it is return to how it was once done.
The prevalence of CCC#460 as part of the consciousness of numerous Catholics is a change from when I was a Catholic before the modern CCC was written. The Baltimore Cathecism (a document as synonymous to the CCC as any available in English, but still much less important than the current CCC) has nothing like CCC#460. While I would say the teaching in CCC#460 have been present within the Catholic Church throughout history, they were so deemphasized that most Catholics through most of the 20th century and for many centuries before would scream “blasphemy” at the words of CCC#460. You might say this is just a change in emphasis or knowledge, but not a change in doctrine.
Finally, there is little doubt that doctrine developed a great deal during the first 4 centuries of the church and beyond. Development is another word for change so, the Catholic Church changed doctrines even if you call it development, “organic development” (acorn into oak), or some other word/words.
Charity, TOm

The anointing of the sick has always been a sacrament for those who are in danger of death, and it still is. It is the world that has changed. A prolonged fever is in most cases, relieved with an aspirin and antibiotics, where once it was a sign of being in danger of death. And sadly, illnesses that are cured today with a single visit to a doctor, were once the end of many lives.

Today our signs of being in danger of death are old age, hospitalizations and minor medical procedures such as (name removed by moderator)atient surgeries. These are the circumstances today where the sacrament is received. And thanks be to God, many if not most who fall ill, do not die. But some do die. The world before our modern medicine was the opposite, many or not most who fell ill, died. But some lived.

What Vatican II did was distinguish between the circumstances, where in the modern world, death is known medically to be imminent, and the person receives last rites. To the circumstance where the person is in danger of death, but is not on their death bed.

As for ccc460, you are looking at through Mormon eyes, again and still. The Baltimore catechism was used for teaching children. What is amazing about the current CCC is its theological depth. It is used by adults to teach or study the faith. Children do not memorize it.

If you never learned that we are partakers of the divine nature when we receive the Eucharist, and that the Eucharist prefigures our life in heaven where the sacrament is perfected and fulfilled…well, I’m incredulous. You must have never read popular American Catholic periodicals, or listened to Catholic radio or TV broadcasts.

No Catholic has ever believed this to be blasphemy. The Mormon overlay that you insist on, is most certainly, a blasphemy. Your are not God, you will not be God, there is ONE God. And it isn’t you, and will never be you.

 

[RebeccaJ]

If you ask my son if he would like to be like me, I expect he would say “yes and no.” Where I to be much more than I am, perhaps he would say unquailingly “yes.” I desire for my son and daughter to be better than I am. In my feeble way I have provided for them that I might lift them up and hopefully catapult them to being better than I ever was. At 18 my son is far ahead of me. But His desire to be like me (or like a more perfect version of me) is not an aspiration for greatness, but a desire to be all I want him to be. If I an evil man can give him a fish, surely God is who is good (and omnipotent) can give Him (and me) even more.
To believe God is good and omnipotent and desires to give us the life that He enjoys is to ascribe to God a great-making property without which He would not really be God. It has nothing to do with human aspirations.
Charity, TOm

But you show your aspirations for being a god here, when you place yourself as a god over your son, as though that is all that God is, is a better version of you.

 

[Stephen168]

The Eastern view of theosis (at least from Gregory Palamas and on) has at its heart the “incommunicable ESSENCE” of God. This essence is absolutely beyond the ability to experience, enter into, … for the human. It is God’s ENERGIES that are completely part of the deified human, but the essence if forever beyond.
This is at odds with Thomist views which claim that the beautific vision consists of God’s essence and energies not merely His energies.
If it matters, here is a section from David Bradshaw in Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom, pages 255-256:

Aquinas’ teaching on the beatific vision exhibits with particular clarity the difference separating him from the eastern tradition. The most immediately obvious is that, whereas for the East God is beyond knowing, Aquinas regards Him as the highest intelligible object.

The ancient analogy of theosis is the poker on the fire. While the poker takes on many attributes of fire, it never becomes fire; it remains iron.

The quote Bradshaw makes of Aquinas comes from the question: Do the angels see God through his essence? To stay with the analogy; will we see the fire and know it is God?

While Aquinas says we will see the fire and know it is God, he is not saying we will become God. We will not become the fire.

Believing we can know the fire doesn’t mean we will become the fire as Mormon’s believe. Mormons believe we are a spark which will become fire; God in embryo. Christianity has never taught such a thing. According to David Paulsen, Joseph Smith made it up in 1844.

 

[TOmNossor]

RebeccaJ,
I think your explanation of the CHANGE in the “anointing of the sick” practice is well taken. Your assessment of why this CHANGE happened seems solid. My statement was merely that it was a CHANGE. Unlike some other CHANGES, I have discussed here, I do not believe it creates internal inconsistencies for Catholic truth claims.

As for ccc460, you are looking at through Mormon eyes, again and still. The Baltimore catechism was used for teaching children. What is amazing about the current CCC is its theological depth. It is used by adults to teach or study the faith. Children do not memorize it.

If you never learned that we are partakers of the divine nature when we receive the Eucharist, and that the Eucharist prefigures our life in heaven where the sacrament is perfected and fulfilled…well, I’m incredulous. You must have never read popular American Catholic periodicals, or listened to Catholic radio or TV broadcasts.

No Catholic has ever believed this to be blasphemy. The Mormon overlay that you insist on, is most certainly, a blasphemy. Your are not God, you will not be God, there is ONE God. And it isn’t you, and will never be you.

While I was Catholic I pridefully felt I was a better Catholic than many around me (but not all). I looked down upon the girls who sniffed the mimeograph paper during Sunday school. I at least paid attention. We were there to learn about God not “cut-up” as my grandmother would have said. I missed truth in Sunday school I should have gained. I think one of the reasons I missed it was that I was content to pay more attention than some others without recognizing that this was an opportunity to learn more about God and what He had done for me. As a very young adult, I also did not read Catholic periodicals or partake of Catholic TV or radio. All that being said, I doubt I missed any concept of “gods” meaning “Father, Son, and those who receive the adoption.”
My mother who went to Catholic High School in the 50’s and Catholic college in the early 60’s was the one who screamed her rejection of the WORDS of CCC#460. I am sure she knew we were reading from my father’s copy of a Catholic book, but I doubt she knew the full significance of the CCC.
My sedavacantist friend finds the deification language in CCC#460 to be yet another example of the modern Catholic Church going off the rails. (In fairness, my SSPX advocate friend has no problem with this, but he was a Protestant minister in the 1990’s so he never knew the Catholicism I claim balks at CCC#460).
So, I am unconvinced you who if am correct were not Catholic in the 90’s, know precisely what you speak about. However, I can admit that I was not the witness I should have been AND that my other witnesses (though in complete agreement) are small in number.
Charity, TOm

 

[TOmNossor]

But you show your aspirations for being a god here, when you place yourself as a god over your son, as though that is all that God is, is a better version of you.

Rebecca,
That you can see in my love for my son an aspiration for self-deification of myself, makes me sad. I wonder if you forgot I was a member of THAT church if you would see the same thing?

I am too tired to reproduce these words in a way that you would again cry “self-deification.” I want to believe that God loves me as much as He loves the Virgin Mary so here are the words of Fulton Sheen:

Just suppose that you could have pre-existed your own mother, in much the same way that an artist pre-exists his painting. Furthermore, suppose that you had the infinite power to make your mother anything that you pleased, just as a great artist like Raphael has the power of realizing his artistic ideas. Suppose you had this double power, what kind of mother would you have made for yourself?
Would you have made her of such a type that would make you blush because of her unwomanly and un-mother-like actions? Would you have made her exteriorly and interiorly of such a character as to make you ashamed of her? Or would you have made her, so far as human beauty goes; the most beautiful woman in the world; and so far as beauty of the soul goes, one who would radiate every virtue, every manner of kindness and charity and loveliness; one who by the purity of her life and her mind and her heart would be an inspiration not only to you but even to your fellow men, so that all would look up to her as the very incarnation of what is best in motherhood?”
Now if you who are an imperfect being and who have not the most delicate conception of all that is fine in life would have wished for the loveliest of mothers, do you think that our Blessed Lord, who not only pre-existed His own mother but who had an infinite power to make her just what He chose, would in virtue of all the infinite delicacy of His spirit make her any less pure and loving and beautiful than you would have made your own mother? If you who hate selfishness would have made her selfless and you who hate ugliness would have made her beautiful, do you not think that the Son of God, who hates sin, would have made His own mother sinless and He who hates moral ugliness would have made her immaculately beautiful?

I who believe the Theotokos was a choice spirit who pre-existed her incarnation, do not cast blame upon Him, because we have not been made gods (or immaculately conceived) from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods. Utilizing the same thought process that Fulton Sheen did, I say that if I can love my son enough to want the best for him and utilize my finite power to lift him up, surly God who is omnibenevolent and omnipotent will do all he can to deify individuals who cooperate with Him (and not because cooperation is earning a reward, but because God will not force us against our will).

And again, that you can see in my love for my son an aspiration for self-deification of myself, makes me sad.
Charity, TOm

 

[KathleenGee]

Our instructor under the bishop who then took Pope Benedict’s place, this program set up to correct errors taught by lay parish professionals in the 1990s during poor catechesis, brought us to CCC460.

He instructed us to take out our pens and write next to it, we partake of divine grace but are separate.

We are creatures and always will be. Otherwise if we think we can become gods, we are little Eves all over again, regressing back to The Fall.

Likewise, I remember a group of Mormon men coming on here, that were contradicting me on this. I then went back and went through the doctrines leading up to CCC460, thus proving they were reading the passage out of context and, as Rebecca stated, with Mormon eyes.

Same about this ‘new’ discovery that the Catholic Church’s ‘Theosis’ proved Joseph Smith right in Deseret News, May 2008. I read the article and it was proving nothing.

Likewise those fellows who came on refused to acknowledge the footnotes that came with CCC460, this communion pertaining to the Eucharist, the Bread of Life. We are Christianized by Word and Eucharist, become ‘little christs’ here on earth when we extend His life to others through service, good will, healing, feeding, clothing, nurturing, visiting those in prison, burying the dead.

 

[Tarquin]

While you might equate Ostler to Aquinas, Aquinas provided reason for Christian beliefs. Olster is changing Mormon belief to make it reasonable; rejecting Joseph Smith. Much of Aquinas’ reasoning has been accepted by the Catholic Church. I know the Mormon Church has rejected Joseph Smith’s teaching on the Book of Mormon, but Has Ostler’s reasoning been accepted by the Mormon prophet?

I put no faith in Ostler. It is true that he is a Mormon, and he does argue for his positions. But those positions are the vague, self-contradictory, and constantly shifting positions common in Mormon “doctrine”.)

David Paulsen writes in the forward to the book by Olsten, to which we have been referred. Paulson wrote,
*"… Blake begins to formulate **for the first time ever *a systematic Mormon Christology,"
This is a strange thing to say, considering that in the very book for which Paulsen wrote the Forward, Blake himself wrote:
“There is no authoritative systematic development of Mormon beliefs. There is no final, once and for all, statement of the truth.”

No “once and for all statement of the truth”? That is obviously at odds with Jesus, Peter, and Aquinas, who knew there are absolutes. Mormonism is a religion of relativisms, and this relativism is an obstacle to Mormons when one tries to teach them about Theological absolutes. As McMurrin observed,

• “The Mormon theologians have moved somewhat **ambiguously *between the emotionally satisfying absolutism of traditional theism and the radical finitism logically demanded by their denial of creation and encouraged by the pragmatic character of their daily faith. [Their failure to appreciate their own position is due in part] from their own brand of scholasticism and their often intense legalism.”

Furthermore, Paulsen’s claim that Blake “for the first time ever” begins to set up a systematic Mormon Christology is false. Who forgets history will repeat it, and who forgets the advancement of religious philosophy will repeat that effort to, though perhaps less successfully than former generations. Sterling McMurrin, a Philosopher, Professor of Christian Theology and Christian Ethics, and a Mormon, wrote,
“… the Mormon writers of earlier generations enjoyed a more profound grasp of philosophical issues and exhibited greater intellectual acumen in their attempts upon those issues than do their present successors.” (The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion)

In a 1993 taped interview, McMurrin made some remarks that I believe are pertinent:

“As a matter of fact I am doing some essays on the philosophy of Mormonism and in the preface I have made the point that today it is very difficult to determine what is the official doctrine of the Mormon church. I think it is very difficult. Back when I was learning things about Mormonism, when James E. Talmage and B. H. Roberts and Orsen Whitney–(Here are people of great intellectual strengths and Talmage and Roberts died in 1933 as you will know.) – It was when I was a college student.** Back in those days you could tell what the Mormon church believed and what it didn’t believe. But it wasn’t every Tom, Dick and Harry in the general authorities who were turning out books. And now a days, everyone is turning out these books and people think that, of course, they know what they are talking about, and so you have a hard time.** I mean you have a hard time comparing some of Neal Maxwell’s writings with B. H. Roberts. A few years ago, Daniel Rector … said, “You know, you are a Talmage / Roberts / Widstoe Mormon. The church doesn’t believe these things any more. They don’t go in for that kind of theology anymore.” And I thought. What is this kid trying to tell me. He said, “You have lost touch with reality.” So I got around and got in touch with reality and discovered he was absolutely right. He was absolutely right. Those men have been forgotten. And we now … I haven’t read many of these things lately, so I could be corrected. What the philosophers call as corrigible. Not incorrigible. My stuff is corrigible. But my impression now is that** it would be very difficult to just take the things that are being put out now and determine just what it is that the beliefs of the Mormon church are now**.”

 

[RebeccaJ]

RebeccaJ,
I think your explanation of the CHANGE in the “anointing of the sick” practice is well taken. Your assessment of why this CHANGE happened seems solid. My statement was merely that it was a CHANGE. Unlike some other CHANGES, I have discussed here, I do not believe it creates internal inconsistencies for Catholic truth claims.

While I was Catholic I pridefully felt I was a better Catholic than many around me (but not all). I looked down upon the girls who sniffed the mimeograph paper during Sunday school. I at least paid attention. We were there to learn about God not “cut-up” as my grandmother would have said. I missed truth in Sunday school I should have gained. I think one of the reasons I missed it was that I was content to pay more attention than some others without recognizing that this was an opportunity to learn more about God and what He had done for me. As a very young adult, I also did not read Catholic periodicals or partake of Catholic TV or radio. All that being said, I doubt I missed any concept of “gods” meaning “Father, Son, and those who receive the adoption.”
My mother who went to Catholic High School in the 50’s and Catholic college in the early 60’s was the one who screamed her rejection of the WORDS of CCC#460. I am sure she knew we were reading from my father’s copy of a Catholic book, but I doubt she knew the full significance of the CCC.
My sedavacantist friend finds the deification language in CCC#460 to be yet another example of the modern Catholic Church going off the rails. (In fairness, my SSPX advocate friend has no problem with this, but he was a Protestant minister in the 1990’s so he never knew the Catholicism I claim balks at CCC#460).
So, I am unconvinced you who if am correct were not Catholic in the 90’s, know precisely what you speak about. However, I can admit that I was not the witness I should have been AND that my other witnesses (though in complete agreement) are small in number.
Charity, TOm

I really try to not just pull stuff out of thin air. Both print and media that were popular with American Catholics are available online, going back to the early 19th century. There are numerous discussions on partaking of the divine nature, which include the teaching that we do not change into the essence of the divine nature, we partake of it. Ccc460 does not remove this long held, unchanging doctrine. There is one God.

You have a funny definition for what constitutes change. The Catholic Church does not change doctrines but certainly the world changes and there must always be a contemplation on what it means to be a Christian in the time in which we live, including the meaning of the Sacraments in relationship to our lives, here and now. Artificial birth control was not addressed until it existed. It is not a change in doctrine for the Churxh to expound on how birth control does not align to a Christian life. It is not a change to a Sacrament, to align it to a modern world where danger of death, has a different meaning than 100 years ago.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Rebecca,
That you can see in my love for my son an aspiration for self-deification of myself, makes me sad. I wonder if you forgot I was a member of THAT church if you would see the same thing?

I am too tired to reproduce these words in a way that you would again cry “self-deification.” I want to believe that God loves me as much as He loves the Virgin Mary so here are the words of Fulton Sheen:

I who believe the Theotokos was a choice spirit who pre-existed her incarnation, do not cast blame upon Him, because we have not been made gods (or immaculately conceived) from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods. Utilizing the same thought process that Fulton Sheen did, I say that if I can love my son enough to want the best for him and utilize my finite power to lift him up, surly God who is omnibenevolent and omnipotent will do all he can to deify individuals who cooperate with Him (and not because cooperation is earning a reward, but because God will not force us against our will).

And again, that you can see in my love for my son an aspiration for self-deification of myself, makes me sad.
Charity, TOm

Oh come now, you know very well that this is how Mormonism teaches about you becoming a god. You don’t need to pretend with me.