Mormons and authority

  • Thread starter Thread starter JamesCollins
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Janderich said:
The righteous ascend to one kingdom only, the Celestial. Indeed those who are not righteous will enter the Telestial or Terrestrial, but if there they will, to some extent, not be united as one. They will, in some form or fashion, walk there own way. To be like the Father, to be like the Son, is to be saved, “and to be unlike them is to be destroyed. On this hinge turns the door of salvation” (Lectures on Faith 7:16)
Click to expand...
Which, doesn’t have anything to do with what I wrote. 🤷
 
Janderich said:
The righteous ascend to one kingdom only, the Celestial. Indeed those who are not righteous will enter the Telestial or Terrestrial, but if there they will, to some extent, not be united as one. They will, in some form or fashion, walk there own way. To be like the Father, to be like the Son, is to be saved, “and to be unlike them is to be destroyed. On this hinge turns the door of salvation” (Lectures on Faith 7:16)
Click to expand...
You are using materials no one else in the world considers
honest or valid to try and prove a case against Christianity.
If Christianity is false, why not prove it with its own
materials? Makes no sense.
 
Janderich said:
As suspected, you continue to ignore my question about Elijah. Will you answer? Was Elijah a prophet of God?

I do appreciate that Jharek has engaged the question.
Click to expand...
???

I’ve been off for a while, and now I wish I wasn’t since you apparently completely missed my answer to your question about Elijah, which was post #61, waaaay back on page 5…so no, no one was ignoring you…
 
jadamo said:
???

I’ve been off for a while, and now I wish I wasn’t since you apparently completely missed my answer to your question about Elijah, which was post #61, waaaay back on page 5…so no, no one was ignoring you…
Click to expand...
Don’t feel bad, I’m still waiting for him to explain how if the Apostle John is still living on the Earth, then the Catholic Church’s authority was lost. Plus the whole “translated” being thing.
 
yes, and i am still waiting for anyone to provide a single shred of evidence that the early church changed what it had received from the apostles.

seriously, if there is no evidence, all of claims of the lds rests on, wait for it, absolutely nothing.

no evidence and the lds is reduced to the level of the branch dividians and the jim jones suicide cult.

i am pretty sure even janderich cannot come up with a shred of evidence supporting that fantastically imaginary claim of apostasy.
 
Janderich just makes a big deal about everyone ignoring his question about Elijah, when he apparently completely missed my reply. And he missed my questions in post #'s 79, 80 and 100.

Seems I missed quite a discussion too! Thank you again Janderich for replying to us and doing your best to defend your faith, I appreciate your time here 🙂
 
FathersKnowBest said:
The problem is with the equation. It’s not 1+1+1; rather, it’s
infinity + infinity + infinity = infinity
Click to expand...
That is a better description! Mormons believe all three of their gods are finite, first of all physically in terms of being confined to bodies of flesh and bone (though not blood!).
 
I’m sorry that I cannot get to all the questions. I have tried to answer some but I’m afraid time will not permit me to get to everything. I’m more of a thinker than a writer. But I have appreciated the discussion.
 
Janderich said:
The righteous ascend to one kingdom only, the Celestial. Indeed those who are not righteous will enter the Telestial or Terrestrial, but if there they will, to some extent, not be united as one. They will, in some form or fashion, walk there own way. To be like the Father, to be like the Son, is to be saved, “and to be unlike them is to be destroyed. On this hinge turns the door of salvation” (Lectures on Faith 7:16)
Click to expand...
The Lectures on Faith? You dare?

"We shall in this lecture speak of the Godhead; we mean the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
There are two personages (at this time, Joseph Smith was teaching that the Holy Spirit is not a personage) who constitute the great, matchless, governing, and supreme power over all things - by whom all things were created and made that are created and made, whether visible or invisible;
whether in heaven, on earth, or in the earth, under the earth, or throughout the immensity of space.
They are the Father and the Son: The Father being a personage of spirit, glory, and power, possessing all perfection and fullness.
The Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, a personage of tabernacle, made or fashioned like unto man, or being in the form and likeness of man - or rather, man was formed after his likeness and in his image.
He is also the express image and likeness of the personage of the Father, possessing all the fullness of the Father, or the same fullness with the Father, being begotten of him;
and was ordained from before the foundation of the world to be a propitiation for the sins of all those who should believe on his name;
and is called the Son because of the flesh - and descended in suffering below that which man can suffer, or in other words, suffered greater sufferings, and was exposed to more powerful contradictions than any man can be.
But notwithstanding all this, he kept the law of God and remained without sin; showing thereby that it is in the power of man to keep the law and remain also without sin.

And he being the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, and having overcome, received a fullness of the glory of the Father - possessing the same mind with the Father;
which Mind is the Holy Spirit, that bears record of the Father and the Son;

(N.B.: Not three persons in the Godhead, but two. The Holy Spirit is not a member of the Godhead!)

and these three (two personages and a shared non-personage mind) are one, or in other words, these three constitute the great, matchless, governing, and supreme power over all things; by whom all things were created and made, that were created and made:
and these three constitute the Godhead and are one: the Father and the Son possessing the same mind, the same wisdom, glory, power, and fullness;
filling all in all -the Son being filled with the fullness of the Mind, glory, and power; or in other words the Spirit, glory, and power of the Father - possessing all knowledge and glory, and the same kingdom;

Lectures on Faith 5:1-2 (in part)
 
Janderich said:
…But again, Janderich, you miss the point. Two Beings cannot both be omnipotent. If each were truly omnipotent, neither could have power over the other. The potency of each is limited by the potency of the other! If two are omnipotent, neither is. One would create a blue sky; the other, a green sky. One would forgive; the other, condemn. One would restore the priesthood; the other, remove it. If something prevented them from having power over each other, or drove them to cooperate, that would be the omnipotent thing. If there is any omnipotent Being, it cannot be other than a Single, Simple, Unified, Indivisible Being.
Click to expand...
Stop putting words in my mouth. Again you miss the point. It’s not about cooperation. It’s about omnipotence. I concede: The Father and the Son are omni-cooperative (with each other), okay?. It does not follow from that, that they are also omni-potent, and vice versa. RebeccaJ’s comment applies: where everyone is omnipotent, you have rule by committee whose members, like ancient tribunes in Rome, each has veto power.

Janderich, don’t assume. I am not addressing this from a Trinitarian point of view, but from a Monotheistic one, as applied to a Creator-less polytheistic belief system (Mormonism). The point is not that they compete in actuality, nor that their wills are in conflict. Those are unproductive issues. The quality of omnipotence does not require competition or conflict of will. The problem is one of potential.

The word “potential” is related to the word “omnipotence.” Potence does not refer to what a being does do, but to what a being can do, from Latin “potentia” meaning power. If God cannot actually use a power, then it is not within his potential. God does not have the power to self-extinguish. Therefore, God is not absolutely “omnipotent.” But He is limited in that he is faithful to his own nature. Any act in harmony with the nature of God, God can do. God is omnipotent as God, not as some ungodly monster who can do things contrary to his own nature.

Furthermore, God is omnipotent in the sense that all power (energy, whatever) ultimately derives from God as the Creator. It would not be fair to ask from which Mormon God all the energy of the universe derives, because Mormon Gods do not stand at the beginning of the universe and the creation of energy.

God is all-loving; He can love each single person with the whole (not part but all) of his heart. Parents experience this when they love their children, none more than another and none in diminished amount when a new one is born and receives love. True God’s power is like this. He is all-powerful sicj that there is no amount of power that he does not have. He has all the power that exists. He can give as much power to anything in the universe he wants, from atoms to galaxies, and his own power still “not be diminished.”

Mormon Gods only have as much power as they have priesthood, and only on condition of good behavior. Mormon Gods cannot be omnipotent because the Priesthood is not omnipotent. (“That the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.” D&C 121:36) The Priesthood is a conditional power, not inherent in our being and not inherent in God; it is an attachment. (“That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but]/u] when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.” D&C 121:37) – and the Mormon God is nothing if not a man, right? There is no inherent characteristic of the Mormon God to prevent him from losing the Priesthood. His right to hold Priesthood authority derives from what he has done and what he will do in the future. In other words, God’s power, his “omnipotence,” is dependent on his behavior. If there is anything inherent in God to keep him from doing the misdeeds in DC 121:36-37; then Priesthood should be inherent not “conferred.” If I am at odds with current Mormon doctrine here, I apologize. Do Mormons still teach God was the Savior of the planet where he went through his mortality??

Whether the Father and the Son use any power at all or not, what is the potential of the relationship of their separate powers? I do not contend that they compete! It doesn’t matter whether they compete or not. If they competed, that would be the actualization of the problem. But if they do not compete, the problem still exists in potentiality. My point in the above quote was that they would have the POWER to compete. If they lacked the POWER to compete with another being, then they would not be OMNIPOTENT, they would by only partly potent. A being is not “all” powerful if any other being has equal or more power. My statement that you put in bold is “neither could have power over the other.” You say that statement is false? Then you believe one could have power over the other? Then the one over whom the greater power is held is not omnipotent.
Click to expand...
 
Janderich, I hope you will read TexanKnight’s post. If I had read his questions before I wrote this post, I might have skipped writing it altogether and spent my time doing something frivolous.

Especially: “Why is there a need to work together if each is omnipotent?” Think about your answer before you post it, if you do, because if it affirms the need for an omnipotent being to cooperate with any other potential being, you are cutting into your own argument.

It pains me to repeat it. Paraphrasing TexanKnight’s “It is your trying to make God into something you can understand is your undoing.” – Mormons do not have a theology. They have not pushed back the order of creation to its beginning. They have a Hindu type view of the universe as consisting of endless cycles stretching infinitely into the past (unless those doctrines have changed, too) and into the future. They see God as an exalted man, and cannot comprehend the existence of a being higher than man, who transcends time and space, whose existence is independent of time and space, and who is Simple, meaning that “within” himself all his attributes are self-identified: His Love is His Truth, His Truth is His Intelligence, His Power is His Action, His Idea is His Creation.
 
Tarquin said:
That is a better description! Mormons believe all three of their gods are finite, first of all physically in terms of being confined to bodies of flesh and bone (though not blood!).
Click to expand...
They say their Holy Spirit has a body? Which of their scriptures teach that?
 
Janderich said:
I’m sorry that I cannot get to all the questions. I have tried to answer some but I’m afraid time will not permit me to get to everything. I’m more of a thinker than a writer. But I have appreciated the discussion.
Click to expand...
Well can you think about this?
Here I am a Catholic reading this thread and
here is what I’m understanding:
You have a completely fallible god or two or several hundred,
none of which agree with each other about doctrine and
frequently don’t agree with themselves, changing
their minds quite frequently. And you are doing your
level best to do the same an you would
dearly love for us all to join you in this
Church with doctrines, morals snd faith that change
periodically like autumn leaves falling off trees.
You have no factual avidence, no archeological
evidence that your “prophets” knew what they were
talking about snd they themselves changed their
versions so frequently there is no way to know
what they really believed happened either at the
end of the day.
And I ask myself why would any human being
subject themselves to such intellectual and
emotional tyranny?
Look man, you are hearing trying to correct us
and yet you don’t know how to do that because
you can’t even know at what YOU are correct.
That’s terrible! What a screamingly awful way to
live!
 
Tarquin said:
The Lectures on Faith? You dare?

"We shall in this lecture speak of the Godhead; we mean the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
There are two personages (at this time, Joseph Smith was teaching that the Holy Spirit is not a personage) who constitute the great, matchless, governing, and supreme power over all things - by whom all things were created and made that are created and made, whether visible or invisible;
whether in heaven, on earth, or in the earth, under the earth, or throughout the immensity of space.
They are the Father and the Son: The Father being a personage of spirit, glory, and power, possessing all perfection and fullness.
The Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, a personage of tabernacle, made or fashioned like unto man, or being in the form and likeness of man - or rather, man was formed after his likeness and in his image.
He is also the express image and likeness of the personage of the Father, possessing all the fullness of the Father, or the same fullness with the Father, being begotten of him;
and was ordained from before the foundation of the world to be a propitiation for the sins of all those who should believe on his name;
and is called the Son because of the flesh - and descended in suffering below that which man can suffer, or in other words, suffered greater sufferings, and was exposed to more powerful contradictions than any man can be.
But notwithstanding all this, he kept the law of God and remained without sin; showing thereby that it is in the power of man to keep the law and remain also without sin.

And he being the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, and having overcome, received a fullness of the glory of the Father - possessing the same mind with the Father;
which Mind is the Holy Spirit, that bears record of the Father and the Son;

(N.B.: Not three persons in the Godhead, but two. The Holy Spirit is not a member of the Godhead!)

and these three (two personages and a shared non-personage mind) are one, or in other words, these three constitute the great, matchless, governing, and supreme power over all things; by whom all things were created and made, that were created and made:
and these three constitute the Godhead and are one: the Father and the Son possessing the same mind, the same wisdom, glory, power, and fullness;
filling all in all -the Son being filled with the fullness of the Mind, glory, and power; or in other words the Spirit, glory, and power of the Father - possessing all knowledge and glory, and the same kingdom;

Lectures on Faith 5:1-2 (in part)
Click to expand...
You have not understood the Spirit of the Lord nor the Holy Ghost. You see change in doctrine when there is none. The Lectures on Faith correctly explain the Spirit, the doctrine has not changed. It has just been misunderstood by critics. As is stated, “…possessing the same mind with the Father, which mind is the Holy Spirit.” This statement is as true today as it was then. It matches what I have been explaining for pages and pages.

Further, if you understand the context you will see that it is right to call the Father a personage of spirit. As Joseph Fielding Smith said:
When Paul spoke of the spiritual body, he had no reference at all to the spirit body, and there they have made their mistake. They have confused the spiritual body, or, in other words, the body quickened by the spirit, with the body of the spirit alone. They think that those who believe in the resurrection of the literal body believe that it shall be raised again, quickened by blood, which is not the case….
Click to expand...
After the resurrection from the dead our bodies will be spiritual bodies, but they will be bodies that are tangible, bodies that have been purified, but they will nevertheless be bodies of flesh and bones. They will not be blood bodies. They will no longer be quickened by blood but quickened by the spirit which is eternal, and they shall become immortal and shall never die. (Doctrines of Salvation, 2:.285-286)
Click to expand...
 
This line of questioning is funny in a way, because I wager if I asked you some questions we would see that you put limits on God but have not acknowledged them. For instance, why doesn’t God save everyone?

But to answer your questions as I see them.
The bold statement you have provided is false. As I said, “just because one person is omnipotent doesn’t mean another cannot be. It is not a competition, the will of the Father is the will of the Son.”
Click to expand...
so two people have ALL the power? How does that work, exactly? That would mean that neither could have a thought of their own, because if it differs from the thoughts of the other, then how could either know who is right?
Click to expand...
The Father knows the Son and the Son the Father but this does not mean they do not have free will. To know what one person does is not to control what a person does. They work for the same purpose and to the same end. But they are not the same being.
It seems that trinitarian theology has confused this truth. The Father and the Son work together through the Spirit.
Click to expand...
Why is there a need to work together if each is omnipotent?
Click to expand...
God explained his work, “For behold, this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). To give us immortality and eternal life we must grow and progress. We must learn what evil is and how to overcome it, so that we can be happy. In order to do this, God gives us free agency, he cannot force it upon us.

Moreover, God has a purpose in working as he does. For instance, why did God send his Son if we have the Father? It appears each has a different role to play in this great work.
 
Janderich said:
This line of questioning is funny in a way, because I wager if I asked you some questions we would see that you put limits on God but have not acknowledged them. For instance, why doesn’t God save everyone?

Red herring. God DOES save everyone, but not everyone accepts it. Next?

But to answer your questions as I see them.
The Father knows the Son and the Son the Father but this does not mean they do not have free will. To know what one person does is not to control what a person does. They work for the same purpose and to the same end. But they are not the same being.

Ah…so you can;t answer? I did not ask you to repeat yourself. I asked you to explain how it could be done. You can’t explain because it can’t be done. So what that they know each other? That does not mean they think alike in every situation. And when they do not think alike, how can one be right and the other wrong if both are omnipotent? You can’t answer, because it is impossible.

God explained his work, “For behold, this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39).

Red Herring. It is not doctrine. It is a nice saying from a book of fiction

To give us immortality and eternal life we must grow and progress. We must learn what evil is and how to overcome it, so that we can be happy. In order to do this, God gives us free agency, he cannot force it upon us.

Perhaps…again, red herring. it does not address the impossible scenario Mormons are forced to accept and act like they agree with

Moreover, God has a purpose in working as he does. For instance, why did God send his Son if we have the Father? It appears each has a different role to play in this great work.

No disagreement. But your comment does not preclude the Trinity.
Click to expand...
 
considering that both knoweldge and understanding are gifts of the Holy Spirit, we should keep in mind that those who have never received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit necessarily lack the gifts of the Holy Spirit. this will reduce our frustration with the apparent obstinance of those who refuse to see the absence of logic, reason and evidence in their belief systems and should encourage us to pray that almighty God will give these poor souls the gift of theological faith.

ultimately, faith always precedes knowledge when it comes to divine mysteries.

that was kind of preachy i think, but in the end, we are all trying to be bettter instruments of God’s grace.
 
Janderich said:
snip . . .

God explained his work, “For behold, this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). To give us immortality and eternal life we must grow and progress. We must learn what evil is and how to overcome it, so that we can be happy. In order to do this, God gives us free agency, he cannot force it upon us.

Moreover, God has a purpose in working as he does. For instance, why did God send his Son if we have the Father? It appears each has a different role to play in this great work.
Click to expand...
You’re doing it again Janderich. You use scripture that is not really scripture. This is the message I received when I searched for Moses 1:39 biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Moses+1%3A39&version=RSVCE.

Passage results

No results found.

No valid results were found for your search. Try refining your search using the form above.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top