Mormons and the Gospel

[BJ_Colbert]

petra:

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.

In truth, our existence begins on this earth when we are formed by God in our mother’s womb.

So Catholics believe that there is no existance prior to our birth on earth? You do not believe that God is the Father of your spirits in heaven, but only after the body starts it’s growth in the womb. No wonder we can’t understand each other, we have totally different concepts of when our spirits were created. I never realized that before your post. Thank you for clarifying that.
It helps me to understand where you get some of your (what seem to me) misunderstandings.

BJ

 

[BJ_Colbert]

petra:

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?

BJ, I truly do not desire to be inflammatory or disrespectful. I did assert a strong conclusion based on several facts:

1. Satan was cast out of heaven for desiring to become like God or even above God.
2. The lie that Satan told Adam and Eve was that they could become like God, they would know good and evil, and they would not die.
3. The gospel of Mormonism is that souls can progress to an exalted state of glory, the highest of which is godhood. The God of this world was once a man that has progressed to godhood, and some Mormons in this world may progress to be the Heavenly Father of their own planet. Many, many official LDS documents validate that this is the central objective in Mormonism. Ex-mormons also validate that this is the official church teaching and some “difficult” teachings are withheld from Mormons until they get to an advanced place in their learning.
4. I asserted that the very gospel of Mormonism is the sin of Satan. He wanted to be God, and he has been trying to get people to pursue the same ever since. This is a frightening connection.

It is out of love that I say this, not ridicule. And I will say again that if anyone asserted similar things about Catholicism, I would not be personally offended, but would wish to objectively discuss the evidence. Personally, my opinion means nothing and I welcome correction. I would hope that we are all seekers of Truth–and would desire to go wherever Truth leads us.

Thank you Petra, and concerning #4 I can understand now how you have that connection, since you do not believe your spirit existed before birth. We believe that we made our choice to follow Jesus Christ in the pre-existence and therefore would have been cast out with Satan if we had chosen not to follow Jesus. Therefore we can now progress and learn as much as we can on earth and hopefully no one is trying to be above our Heavenly Father. He is so much ahead of us, that it would be a difficult task to accomplish. We can only try to follow His teachings and his commandments so that we may dwell in His presence some day. I don’t think there is evidence, except what God imparts through faith. I have faith this is true, and you don’t, so it really does no good to discuss what is not tangible. We will never agree on this subject as we have different concepts of the truth.

BJ

 

[tkdnick]

BJ Colbert:

So Catholics believe that there is no existance prior to our birth on earth? You do not believe that God is the Father of your spirits in heaven, but only after the body starts it’s growth in the womb. No wonder we can’t understand each other, we have totally different concepts of when our spirits were created. I never realized that before your post. Thank you for clarifying that.
It helps me to understand where you get some of your (what seem to me) misunderstandings.

You are correct. Catholics believe that our existence (both physical and spiritual) begins at conception. I am surprised that you have never come across this belief. To my knowledge LDS are the only religion that believe that we were spirits prior to birth.

 

[tkdnick]

mormon fool:

Minister TKD,

Wow, I get full “minister” status! :dancing:

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.

I am curious. Why is it that no one else has admitted to the original sin being wrong? I understand the hindsight, but even with hindsight it doesn’t make the actual sin good. No one else from the LDS faith that I have talked to has ever stated this.

Obviously, we should be very suspicious whenever the Father of Lies is moving his mouth. I think we can look to the surrounding text to verify what exactly he is lying about. Satan gets the part wrong when he tells Eve she will not die. Satan gets the part right about her coming to know good and evil because God verifies this in v. 22. That is, unless there are other readings of v. 22 (like God being sarcastic or employing some type of irony).

Oh I’m am completely convinced God was being sarcastic when He said that.

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 agree it is tricky to figure out what God wants when you have no, or little, info about it. But when God tells someone not to do something, it’s pretty clear that’s what he does (or doesn’t) want.

My argument is based on desirability of spiritual growth and not the necessity of it.

Right, but why would spiritual growth be desirable if you already were at “the peak”?

 

[catholic-rcia]

Mormon Fool
I was just reading the way you were thinking about what you had read in the Catechism because of my LDS background. But take that with a grain of salt. I understand the way the LDS look at the fall, so in reading the Catechism you can mistake wht it is saying unless you read it in the Apostolic light. It’s the same with the Bible.

---

We did fall and it was not a good thing by any means. What we learn here is not to fall again. We learn that away from the One Sprit of God we die, because nothing can live with out God. He is at the very center of all things. We learn to find our Creator and long to be with Him. In the same way that Jesus always has been with him, but as adopted children, different than Christ. But we get to share in what Christ has always had in all eternity. As to God being ahead of us, we do not see this as a race with God, behind God. Without God nothing would exist, not even nothing, I believe you need to separate Creator from Creature in your thinking if only for a few moments. Give it a try. God has always had no beginning and no end. We on the other hand have a beginning. You can read this in the story of Genesis. The made in our Image is the Godhead, the one and only. It is a relationship of love that we call the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the in our image. Our meaning God as He is. As He has been revealed to us.

When you can separate God from Created Creature God will become large in your own life. It makes the Son of Man out to be our Salvation in ways that show humility beyond our reasoning. You start to get it, it hits you like a ton of bricks. Here is the difference. Jesus is the Truth, we can only come into this truth, Jesus is the Light, is the light we can come to live in this light. Jesus is the way we can only come to follow this way. Jesus is the only Son of God, the loved in the Godhead. We can become adopted sons of God and this my friend is the great Gift Given. We will always be Children who have progressed in the sense that we found our Creator. Because we know Him and have seen Him, we will never be tempted to leave him again. That’s it, it really is simple. God loves us and waits for us to come back to Him. This is Catholic Progression.

 

[mormon_fool]

tkdnick:

Wow, I get full “minister” status! :dancing:

Hey now, don’t get too excited. I can only recognize official status as determined by someone’s organization or mentioned in their signature with a clever play on initials.

I am curious. Why is it that no one else has admitted to the original sin being wrong? I understand the hindsight, but even with hindsight it doesn’t make the actual sin good. No one else from the LDS faith that I have talked to has ever stated this.

Perhaps in your prior talks the LDS participants were emphasizing what the overall picture looks like to them, hindsight and all. Some of them may have fallen into making an ends justifies the means fallacy (as you point out above).

Others may have pointed to the difficult moral dilemna Adam and Eve were in to downplay their sin. I can sympathize, but even so, it was still a sin and the Book of Mormon calls a spade a spade. I opine that if Adam and Eve had been more spiritually advanced they would have found away around their dilemna without sinning. While I introduce this as a hypothetical, I prefer to think on what really happened.

I would have a hard time representing the range and depth of mormon thinking on the subject, not being a philosopher myself. My approach here has been to identify a common ground and then see I can argue from it that the mormon position is not so crazy as it first appears. The Book of Mormon probably does this better than I can. Analysis of the Fall seems to be one of its favorite topics: see for instance: 2 Nephi 2, Mosiah 3-5, Alma 12, Alma 42, or this search on Adam that hits the high points. These passage tend to affirm what you say some mormons have failed to admit.

later,
fool

 

[Tmaque]

mormon fool:

Hey now, don’t get too excited. I can only recognize official status as determined by someone’s organization or mentioned in their signature with a clever play on initials.

Perhaps in your prior talks the LDS participants were emphasizing what the overall picture looks like to them, hindsight and all. Some of them may have fallen into making an ends justifies the means fallacy (as you point out above).

Others may have pointed to the difficult moral dilemna Adam and Eve were in to downplay their sin. I can sympathize, but even so, it was still a sin and the Book of Mormon calls a spade a spade. I opine that if Adam and Eve had been more spiritually advanced they would have found away around their dilemna without sinning. While I introduce this as a hypothetical, I prefer to think on what really happened.

I would have a hard time representing the range and depth of mormon thinking on the subject, not being a philosopher myself. My approach here has been to identify a common ground and then see I can argue from it that the mormon position is not so crazy as it first appears. The Book of Mormon probably does this better than I can. Analysis of the Fall seems to be one of its favorite topics: see for instance: 2 Nephi 2, Mosiah 3-5, Alma 12, Alma 42, or this search on Adam that hits the high points. These passage tend to affirm what you say some mormons have failed to admit.

later,
fool

I’m curious. The D&C says that Adam and Michael the Archangel are the same person.
Rev. 12: 7
says: "And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels.

Is it LDS belief that all of the spirits in the pre-existence were/are angels?

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Tmaque:

I’m curious. The D&C says that Adam and Michael the Archangel are the same person.
Rev. 12: 7
says: "And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels.

Is it LDS belief that all of the spirits in the pre-existence were/are angels?

I had a similar question a few weeks ago here.

 

[JRR]

Thank you for this wonderful thread!

 

[boppysbud]

Mormon Fool and BJ Colbert, I know this is an old thread that has been ressurected, and in fact I don’t even know whether either of you is still around to read this.

BJ you have said that Catholics think they know about Mormonism than the Mormons, and I can see how you may have gotten that impression.

But…

It is very difficult to understand the LDS faith. You have the writtings of former prophets, yet the concept of continuing revelation means to my understanding that the current prophet can invalidate things said and written by previous prophets. You have the writtings and statements of the Journal of Discourses and the general authorities, yet these can all be wiped out by the current prophet, as in the Blood Atonement thread. And then you guys say that the only source of official Mormon doctrine is the Bible, BOM, D&C and POGP. What is the purpose of all these writings and statements if they all can be wiped out?

No I do not hate or mean to be disrespectful to Mormon teaching, but for the life of me I can’t even understand what it means with all the changes.

 

[Casen]

boppysbud, I’ll try to answer your question.

In LDS theology a prophet disseminates the will of God the his people, just as the prophets of old in the Bible. However, since only Christ lead a perfect life, prophets are not infallible. In the Bible we find true prophets that sinned and were derelict in their duty, such as Jonah, who fled from a difficult assignment. Prophets are mortals who receive the gift of prophecy from time to time, as God directs. Not everything a prophet says or does will be inspired. LDS are not accountable to believe all that every Church leader has ever said, but only those things that have been accepted and approved by consent of the leadership bodies of the Church – just as the Biblical canon was established. Not every word the early apostles said was sacred and they even occasionally disagreed with each other over doctrinal points.

Reverend J.R. Dummelow (not LDS) said:
*"Though purified and ennobled by the influence of the His Holy Spirit, these men each had his own peculiarities of manner and disposition - each with his own education or want of education - each with his own way of looking at things - each influenced differently from one another by the different experiences and disciplines of his life. Their inspiration did not involve a suspension of their natural faculties; it did not make them free from earthly passion; it did not make them into machines - it left them men. "Therefore we find their knowledge sometimes no higher than that of their contemporaries… "(*J.R. Dummelow, One Volume Bible Commentary, p. 85)

For that reason there are a lot of LDS writings that are not OFFICIAL church doctrine. Brigham Young was famous for speculating on the mysteries of God and if he said some strange things from time to time the LDS don’t have a problem with it and don’t get too hung up over it since those things have not been canonized. Joseph Smith speculated also and the Journal of Discourses is chuck full of such speculation, writen by LDS authorities for members to ponder, but it’s not canonized and never has been official church doctrine.

I would think Catholics would appreciate this concept. There are lots of strange things Popes have said over the centuries but I don’t drag them out and rub your noses in them because I assume that the popes were righteous men, inspired by God, yet also imperfect and subject to occasional mistakes. Is this concept too hard to understand?