I believe the Fall caused them to lose what they already had. God gave them everything they needed. The only thing left was to test whether or not they would freely choose to continue in God’s love, or outright reject him. This “spirtual growth” you speak of was only necessary because of the Fall, not before. If you’re already in a perfect state of grace, you are perfectly united with God and don’t need anything else. Salvation history consists of God helping us to return to that original state.
I realize that from your articles of faith. But I ask again, what does baptism clean if not original sin? You baptise 8-year olds in the LDS church. What is being cleansed in the waters of your baptisms?
You all just like to argue about nothing. I said nothing about his published works. You are misconstuing my words, and now you do admit hearing it, that is all I said, so no big deal. I was practically called a lier for saying I heard on TV that he wanted his writings destroyed. I did not say published writing, that would be ludicrous. How do you destroy published works, simply not possible, as there would still exist writings somewhere. He said his personal writing(meaning personal as in not published) Got it everybody.
BJ
Thank you Mormon Fool. I think this is called crazy making, it certainly seemed some of them thought I was lying. Thank you Chris-wa I did not know where to find the TV source or I would have told you. I’m a dinosaur you know.
BJ
Tkdnick, you know I do not mean you, but some here have said when a Mormon feels the promptings of the Holy Spirit that it is merely heart burn.( I construe that as ridiculing my religion) When someone posted that the Mormon religion is Satanic, I construe that as ridicule. They don’t understand that, because they construe it as simply telling the truth. Whether it were true or not, it is disrespectful and hurtful to me and my beliefs. I have tried very hard to always be respectful to the Catholic Church and your beliefs which I have said seem very strange to me, but I would never go so far as to say Satanic or that you were having heartburn if you felt a spiritual guidance. I don’t make fun of people who believe in reincarnation, although I don’t believe in it. I do not ridicule Muslims, Budhists, Janes, Hindus, Jewish or any other religion I do not understand. I don’t pretend to know more about other religions than the people who practice those religions. The Catholics in this thread and others claim to know more about what Mormons believe than the Mormons know. If they are studying that hard then it is not a good thing, but only to provide fodder for ridicule, they should study their own religion with such vigor. Even if the Catholic religion is true, God would not be happy to see such pettiness and viciousness in condeming others who do not share your beliefs.
BJI looked at the link and saw this:
Eve listend to the devil himself, not some random act of sin, or hunger, Satan himself seduced Eve. How she was doing good is a puzzle to me.
This page seems to be saying that God placed A&E in between a rock and a hard place, they were “supposed” to have children and “supposed” to not eat, but they were allowed only one choice, did God really do that to them? After each day of creation God said that what he did was Good, meaning that there was nothing lacking in what He put forth, no tough life or death choices around every corner.
Gen3: 22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
I dont know what to say here.
God has no room for wanting to do evil, He does not tempt. Satan tempts becase it is the root of evil…temptaion.
There are various ways in which this term is used in mormon teachings. I think a working definition for the purposes of this discussion might be those fundamental doctrines that are centered around Christ’s sacrifice and triumph over sin and death and how we mortals can best benefit from them (i.e., what the basics of following Christ’s teachings are) .
This is more or less how I delimited what the Gospel entails above. We seem to be on the same page so far, except as to when it was first revealed.
OK. But, I would say that the first step is to develop faith in Jesus.
It is only mentioned in Mormon scripture (see Moses 6 again) that I am aware of.
I think you are right that Joseph Smith would have first become aware of baptism via the Bible and Jesus. Translating 3 Nephi 11 more directly influenced Joseph Smith to get baptized (in the LDS manner).
I like the way you think…
I would not say Heaven is stagnant as the Garden of Eden was. Someone who is admitted into Heaven has been perfected in Christ and has obtained the ability to remain sinless in God’s presence.
catholic-rcia said:
I’m sorry if this sounds direspectful to the LDS members here, but this is one of the goofiest things I have ever read! You honestly believe that God was pleased with the fact that Adam and Eve disobeyed him?!?!?!? Would you be pleased if one of your kids disobeyed you?!? NO! Neither would God!
But, God knew we would disobey Him, He had a plan in place for that occurance. He knew, just as we know our children are not always going to obey. That is why we punish them and then hope they learn not to commit the same sin again. God is never happy when we make wrong choices, but He created us and he knows our human nature. That is why we have the plan of salvation, so we can repent of our sins.
BJYes, to have people call your religion satanic or dismiss your feelings to heartburn is disrespectful and derogatory. But I have not seen any posts like that in this thread (have seen it in other threads, but not this one).Tkdnick, you know I do not mean you, but some here have said when a Mormon feels the promptings of the Holy Spirit that it is merely heart burn.( I construe that as ridiculing my religion) When someone posted that the Mormon religion is Satanic, I construe that as ridicule. They don’t understand that, because they construe it as simply telling the truth. Whether it were true or not, it is disrespectful and hurtful to me and my beliefs. I have tried very hard to always be respectful to the Catholic Church and your beliefs which I have said seem very strange to me, but I would never go so far as to say Satanic or that you were having heartburn if you felt a spiritual guidance. I don’t make fun of people who believe in reincarnation, although I don’t believe in it. I do not ridicule Muslims, Budhists, Janes, Hindus, Jewish or any other religion I do not understand. I don’t pretend to know more about other religions than the people who practice those religions. The Catholics in this thread and others claim to know more about what Mormons believe than the Mormons know. If they are studying that hard then it is not a good thing, but only to provide fodder for ridicule, they should study their own religion with such vigor. Even if the Catholic religion is true, God would not be happy to see such pettiness and viciousness in condeming others who do not share your beliefs.
To answer one question,I believe the Gospel has always existed and always will exist. Whatever is of God is eternal, no beginning and no end. Just my humble opinion.
I agree 100% with what you have said here and with what Leo has said, “Christ’s inexpressible grace gave us blessings better than those the demon’s envy had taken away.” And I think every Catholic would say they agree as well. God knew we would disobey, and yet, because they disobeyed they were punished. He did not, however, rejoice in their sin. He did not think it wonderful that they chose to disobey him, in the same way that you would not rejoice and think it wonderful if one of your kids disobeyed you. I agree 100% that wonderous good things have come from the fall, but that does not make what they did a good thing.
Thanks for the compliments. I have always enjoyed discussions with you as well. I would disgree though and say that I have been disrespectful on occasion, and I am glad to have people around to correct me when I do.Tkdnick, you have never show disrespect for LDS, I appreciate your thoughtful questions, and they are fair questions. I think Mormon Fool is very much more educated than I am on both sides of the questions. I would never have known about St Leo the Great.
BJ, you are overreacting. You said ALL of his works were to be burned. I inferred that you, in fact, meant everything and pointed out that there are volumes of his work still available at the Vatican site. It was a misunderstanding–pease accept my apologies.You all just like to argue about nothing. I said nothing about his published works. You are misconstuing my words, and now you do admit hearing it, that is all I said, so no big deal. I was practically called a lier for saying I heard on TV that he wanted his writings destroyed. I did not say published writing, that would be ludicrous. How do you destroy published works, simply not possible, as there would still exist writings somewhere. He said his personal writing(meaning personal as in not published) Got it everybody.
BJ, Please see post #46. You were the first to bring up the fact that some people (it had not been previously mentioned in this thread) regard your burning of the bosom as heartburn. In post #51, I acknowledged the fact that a true spiritual experience can be accompanied by emotional and physical sensations. But I also warned that physical and emotional sensations may have other causes and are unreliable as a form of testing doctrine. Nobody has been ridiculing you. I would love to futher objectively discuss various methods for testing doctrine. Would you be open to that?Tkdnick, you know I do not mean you, but some here have said when a Mormon feels the promptings of the Holy Spirit that it is merely heart burn.( I construe that as ridiculing my religion) When someone posted that the Mormon religion is Satanic, I construe that as ridicule. They don’t understand that, because they construe it as simply telling the truth. Whether it were true or not, it is disrespectful and hurtful to me and my beliefs. I have tried very hard to always be respectful to the Catholic Church and your beliefs which I have said seem very strange to me, but I would never go so far as to say Satanic or that you were having heartburn if you felt a spiritual guidance. I don’t make fun of people who believe in reincarnation, although I don’t believe in it. I do not ridicule Muslims, Budhists, Janes, Hindus, Jewish or any other religion I do not understand. I don’t pretend to know more about other religions than the people who practice those religions. The Catholics in this thread and others claim to know more about what Mormons believe than the Mormons know. If they are studying that hard then it is not a good thing, but only to provide fodder for ridicule, they should study their own religion with such vigor. Even if the Catholic religion is true, God would not be happy to see such pettiness and viciousness in condeming others who do not share your beliefs.
To answer one question,I believe the Gospel has always existed and always will exist. Whatever is of God is eternal, no beginning and no end. Just my humble opinion.
You are entirely welcome. Please keep the above in mind as an interpretive aid whenever you come across goofy mormon ideas about the Fall. Mormons never say sin is good. Some quotables are looking at the overall picture with a considerable amount of hindsight. We are saying sin + God’s grace + man’s repentance = net good. It isn’t an equation that denies the negativeness of sin. It rejoices in Jesus’s triumph and stresses the need for man to repent.
Good catch. You are a very observant reader.
I feel that it is tricky business to try to figure out what God wants. God was acting justly when he punished Adam and Eve for not following his commandment. Is there any doubt that Satan was acting at cross-purposes to God and hence deserves to be punished?
I am glad we can agree on both of these notions. My argument is based on desirability of spiritual growth and not the necessity of it.
At baptism, the sins that the person being baptized has a ) personally commited up to that point, b ) is accountable for, and c ) has repented of are cleansed.
Thanks for the invite.
This is very good advice. Sounds much like what a mormon missionary would say.
I have all the confidence in the world that you have a better understanding of how these passages should be interpretted than I.
I hope you will demonstrate where “not right” interpretation has crept into this dialogue and I will gladly retract any mistatement. I admit to making a slight restatement of St. Leo’s and St. Acquinas’ quotes to call attention to others of a first-glance ressemblance I see in our ideas.
I am looking forward to the next installment. Thanks for starting to address my questions.
Your question is based on an assumption: that the Heavenly Father of earth is a progressed man-god and he and his wife have produced billions of spirit babies. Your question assumes the doctrine of pre-existence, which is unsupported in the Bible. Pre-existence is also integrally woven into the doctrine of eternal progression–also unbiblical and has been the center of this thread’s discussion.