Question for LDS folks.

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I have no idea. My family members (most of whom are LDS all hold to the older view) and tell me that they know no one who holds the other view. However, the BYU professor in the article claims that the majority of LDS hold the modern view. Maybe it’s a Utah thing, I don’t know. I do know Utah/So Idaho Mormons are more cliquish and narrow-minded than their counterparts elsewhere.
 
Here we go again.

So many teachings and constructs of Mormonism are false. Many Mormons are getting online to find the truth and are leaving Mormonism. There are those who, when they leave, are shunned. Very sad.

Pray for the Mormon people. I see this as a work of the Holy Spirit and people becoming better educated, and most of all inspite of controlling leadership, now beginning to think and reason.
 
Tmaque said:
I’d like the opinion of LDS on this board as to whether they hold to the traditional LDS belief that God was once a man, or if they hold to the more modern LDS notion that God had no beginning as explained by this BYU professor:

patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Mormon-Understanding-of-Persons-and-God-James-Faulconer-08-18-2011.html

Thanks for not commenting if you’re not LDS. This is a question for active LDS folks.
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Sorry, you can slap me for commenting, but I think it is importatnt to consider the fact that this is an easy one for them to get around. They don’t believe you and I had any beginning either; in our pre-mortal existence we were co-eternal with God. So for them to say that God had no beginning is not a contradiction of their position that God was once a man.
 
KathleenGee said:
Here we go again.

So many teachings and constructs of Mormonism are false. Many Mormons are getting online to find the truth and are leaving Mormonism. There are those who, when they leave, are shunned. Very sad.

Pray for the Mormon people. I see this as a work of the Holy Spirit and people becoming better educated, and most of all inspite of controlling leadership, now beginning to think and reason.
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Unfortunately, the damage done is far reaching. More often then not, most former Mormons become atheists.
 
SteveVH said:
Sorry, you can slap me for commenting, but I think it is importatnt to consider the fact that this is an easy one for them to get around. They don’t believe you and I had any beginning either; in our pre-mortal existence we were co-eternal with God. So for them to say that God had no beginning is not a contradiction of their position that God was once a man.
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You misunderstand the doctrine. “As man is God once was, as God is man may become.” This is the doctrine that God was once a mortal man on another planet. He lived a good life, was resurrected, and then “progressed” over eons of time to Godhood. So for them to believe that God had no beginning and has always existed AS GOD is indeed a big leap. It also means that they don’t believe they can ever be equal with God. It’s a belief system that’s more like the Eastern view of theosis than the old LDS view.
 
Marie5890 said:
Unfortunately, the damage done is far reaching. More often then not, most former Mormons become atheists.
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It’s interesting you say that. After I left Mormonism I was an atheist for 13 years before God dragged me kicking and screaming into the Catholic Church.
 
Tmaque said:
It’s interesting you say that. After I left Mormonism I was an atheist for 13 years before God dragged me kicking and screaming into the Catholic Church.
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I too fell into the agnostic/atheistic catagory after I left Mormonism.

I look to my Catholic baptism and my grandmother’s prayers has having led me back…
 
Tmaque said:
You misunderstand the doctrine. “As man is God once was, as God is man may become.” This is the doctrine that God was once a mortal man on another planet. He lived a good life, was resurrected, and then “progressed” over eons of time to Godhood. So for them to believe that God had no beginning and has always existed AS GOD is indeed a big leap. It also means that they don’t believe they can ever be equal with God. It’s a belief system that’s more like the Eastern view of theosis than the old LDS view.
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I do believe that this all came from Lorenzo Snow. Not sure what the exact saying is…
 
Tmaque said:
You misunderstand the doctrine. “As man is God once was, as God is man may become.” This is the doctrine that God was once a mortal man on another planet. He lived a good life, was resurrected, and then “progressed” over eons of time to Godhood. So for them to believe that God had no beginning and has always existed AS GOD is indeed a big leap. It also means that they don’t believe they can ever be equal with God. It’s a belief system that’s more like the Eastern view of theosis than the old LDS view.
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No, I understand very well this Mormon doctrine. You misunderstand what I am saying. They believe that none of us had a beginning, both God and man. They believe that man, in his pre-mortal state was co-eternal with God. They do not distinguish between divine and human nature. Therefore, they believe that even if God was once as we are now that he was still eternal because we are eternal as well. God is just further down the line of progression than are we. And by the way, the Mormon notion of exaltation is not anything like the Christian understanding of theosis, but we can save that for another thread.
 
When I was LDS, it was taught that God was once a sinful man, and that, if we did all we were supposed to do, we could also become gods…

as time goes on…they back further and further away from that teaching.

Mormons do that…as facts disprove them, or as people flinch at their teachings, their teachings and history change…
 
SteveVH said:
They believe that man, in his pre-mortal state was co-eternal with God. They do not distinguish between divine and human nature. Therefore, they believe that even if God was once as we are now that he was still eternal because we are eternal as well.
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Steve,

Help me…my Sunday was clear as a bell…until now… where did or do we exist in a pre-mortal state? And what is a pre-mortal state? And this is Mormon doctrine consistently over time?

Pork
 
Porknpie said:
Steve,

Help me…my Sunday was clear as a bell…until now… where did or do we exist in a pre-mortal state? And what is a pre-mortal state? And this is Mormon doctrine consistently over time?

Pork
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Sorry for screwing up your Sunday, Pork. 🙂

I can’t tell you when it originated, off the top of my head, but yes, this is the doctrine that, IMO, causes the greatest confusion when discussing pretty much everything with a Mormon. They believe that we derive from “intelligences”, which are co-eternal with God, in other words self-existing, apart from God, which God then formed into spirit children. As spirit children, we made the decision to be born into this life on earth. On LDS.org I read a post from one Mormon who defended abortion on the grounds that the unborn child had chosen its own fate in its pre-mortal existence so that was the way it was suppose to be. Anyway, this belief influences any and all discussions with Mormons and it is important, I think, to realize this.

When discussing Adam and Eve, for instance, their view is that we chose to be born and enter this life in order to gain knowledge of good and evil in order that we can then progress (process of exaltation) and become a god ourself. Therefore, God intended for man to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as that is the only way he could progress. Adam and Eve are thought of as pretty much mindless creatures walking around in a fog until they ate of the fruit and their eyes were opened. Who could fault them for desiring knowledge, right? In any case, original sin was a good thing, a necessary part of God’s plan and what he desired for us. The biggy is that knowledge is all important in our salvation (very gnostic of them), and coming to earth and living a human life, experiencing everything we experience, is the only way to godhood, the destiny of all good Mormons.

As always, I stand open to correction, but I have gained this knowledge first hand through many discussions. I’ve never seen a Mormon shy away from the pre-mortal existence doctrine and it influences all of the rest of their beliefs.
 
Tmaque said:
You misunderstand the doctrine. “As man is God once was, as God is man may become.” This is the doctrine that God was once a mortal man on another planet. He lived a good life, was resurrected, and then “progressed” over eons of time to Godhood. So for them to believe that God had no beginning and has always existed AS GOD is indeed a big leap. It also means that they don’t believe they can ever be equal with God. It’s a belief system that’s more like the Eastern view of theosis than the old LDS view.
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One of our former Mormon CAF participants had the view that God the Father was like Jesus, a man who was a savior of another world, some time in the past. Of course, this brings up the topic of Christology in Mormonism, which differs from Christianity…
 
RebeccaJ said:
One of our former Mormon CAF participants had the view that God the Father was like Jesus, a man who was a savior of another world, some time in the past. Of course, this brings up the topic of Christology in Mormonism, which differs from Christianity…
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Rebecca, would you mind chiming in on the pre-mortal existence issue? Am I very far off?

Thanks.

Steve
 
Tmaque said:
I’d like the opinion of LDS on this board as to whether they hold to the traditional LDS belief that God was once a man, or if they hold to the more modern LDS notion that God had no beginning as explained by this BYU professor:

patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Mormon-Understanding-of-Persons-and-God-James-Faulconer-08-18-2011.html

Thanks for not commenting if you’re not LDS. This is a question for active LDS folks.
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I never heard of the second view proposed in that document in my entire life. I’m not grasping what the difference is to the first view either. As SteveVH already pointed out, Mormons believe that they are the same nature as God. Believe to be themselves gods in training.

Seems to me that article is trying to rid Mormonism of an unresolvable flaw, to Christian eyes and ears, that has been there since Smith introduced it, particularly in the King Follet sermon.

Mormons have no teaching that accepts anything as being created ex nihlio, or anything except “matter” and “intelligences” existing eternally. That article just makes Mormonism more confusing than it already is
 
RebeccaJ said:
I never heard of the second view proposed in that document in my entire life. I’m not grasping what the difference is to the first view either. As SteveVH already pointed out, Mormons believe that they are the same nature as God. Believe to be themselves gods in training.

Seems to me that article is trying to rid Mormonism of an unresolvable flaw, to Christian eyes and ears, that has been there since Smith introduced it, particularly in the King Follet sermon.

Mormons have no teaching that accepts anything as being created ex nihlio, or anything except “matter” and “intelligences” existing eternally. That article just makes Mormonism more confusing than it already is
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I disagree. We’re talking about a development of doctrine here toward reason. It’s not fully defined or thought out, but it’s a step in the right direction. Here’s the important part of the article:

"The second way: The more common contemporary LDS belief about intelligence is that each person, including God, exists eternally as an individual entity. This version of intelligence is also finitistic: the existence of other eternal entities, both personal entities (intelligences) and impersonal ones (whatever basic physical entities there are), puts limits on God that we would not find in classical theism.

But unlike the older understanding of intelligence, this contemporary view doesn’t require that some force have brought God into existence. It allows that he has eternally been God. It doesn’t raise the question to which the 19th century gave answers, such as Lorenzo Snow’s, so one can believe in the eternality of intelligences without believing the claims posited in response to the older way of explaining them.

On the second view it is still possible that, by God’s grace, human beings may be brought to be as he is, brought to be like God—though never to be his equal. But that belief is more like the traditional doctrine of theosis and doesn’t require speculation about God previously existing as a mortal."

The doctrine is still very flawed but it is one step closer to the truth. I’ll celebrate anything that brings my family members even a little closer to truth. My question, and the ONLY reason I posted on here at all was to see if Mormons agree with the statement made by the professor that this new view is the most common in contemporary Mormonism.
 
Tmaque said:
.

On the second view it is still possible that, by God’s grace, human beings may be brought to be as he is, brought to be like God—though never to be his equal. But that belief is more like the traditional doctrine of theosis and doesn’t require speculation about God previously existing as a mortal."

The doctrine is still very flawed but it is one step closer to the truth. I’ll celebrate anything that brings my family members even a little closer to truth. My question, and the ONLY reason I posted on here at all was to see if Mormons agree with the statement made by the professor that this new view is the most common in contemporary Mormonism.
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Mormons have always taught that their God will always be higher than any man who becomes a god from this planet. This is not because their God IS God, it is because their God, who was once a man, is further along in his progressions and always will be. This is the understanding of Mormon subordination to God. I don’t see how that article changes this teaching/belief, it is only rephrasing it, and like a lot of Mormon apologetics, it obfuscates associated Mormon teachings. Obfuscation is not truth.

Theosis has nothing in common to Mormonism’s idea of progression and exaltation.
 
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