The Nature of God in Mormonism.

[AMDGtoo]

My complaint is that there were more than simply two that should be quoted (Ireaneus in particular, who had impeccable credentials–he was not only a student of St. Polycarp who had been a disciple of the Apostle John but, according to another little book by Mike Aquilina also about the early Church fathers, particularly took on Gnosticism with it’s wild claims about cosmology.)

Yes, Justin Martyr and Tertullian did teach that God created all things out of nothing, but it’s not just about two–it’s about the whole (and the Church had and exercised authority even at that young age.) It’s about the Church fighting back against Gnostic and other heretical claims.

And please forgive me if I want others to understand that early time in the Church and not just “pick and choose” one or two early Fathers who may have been tarnished a bit at that. That IMO is the historical argument that I think needs to at least be mentioned–that the writings of the Church Fathers cannot be taken out of context.

If you don’t like Jurgen’s The Faith of the Early Fathers, there’s Migne’s masterpiece, Patrologia, or Maxwell Staniforth’s Early Christian Writings.

 

[PaulDupre]

Hi Paul,

So you are saying that you don’t need to resort to metaphor, because Catholics believe the Trinity is one in the same way Mormons do? It’s just that you ALSO believe that they are one in Being. That’s much better than what I put in Catholic mouths, so thanks for correcting me.

Precisely.

On the other hand, there is still the problem that the Bible never says anything about a “oneness of Being.” As far as I can tell, John 17 is the only place that talks explicitly about the Divine Unity at all.

We believe that “oneness in being” is necessarily implied in the following passages:

Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.
-Isaiah 43:10

Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any.
-Isaiah 44:8

I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:
-Isaiah 45:5

Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.
-Isaiah 45:22

So, for Catholics, the idea of multiple Gods is not possible. The three divine persons revealed fully in the New Testament must be one God whose nature it is to exist as a family of three persons.

Paul

 

[BDawg]

My complaint is that there were more than simply two that should be quoted (Ireaneus in particular,

Hi A,

Irenaeus wrote around 180 A.D. Since I said that creatio ex nihilo started becoming popular in Christianity in the mid-second century, I don’t think I was hiding anything. I quoted Tertullian and Origen to show that by the mid-third century, they still had to argue against Christians who believed in *creatio ex materia. *Which they did. So Jurgens doesn’t have anything in his compendium that contradicts what I said, I don’t think.

If you don’t like Jurgen’s The Faith of the Early Fathers, there’s Migne’s masterpiece, Patrologia, or Maxwell Staniforth’s Early Christian Writings.

I said I DID like Jurgen’s compendium. I just think you should read the whole thing instead of going back and forth from the index.

Also, the Patrologia is essentially all in Greek and Latin. Since my Greek is kind of crummy (I only had one semester) and my Latin is non-existent, I’ll pass for now, and stick with English translations. The Ante-Nicene Fathers and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series are a little dated (since other writings have been discovered since then,) but they’re still pretty good. And you can read them for free at ccel.org/fathers.html . Most of the quotations I use are from there. You can even buy the whole 38 volume set for $300 at Christianbook.com!

So anyway, please don’t take my comments to mean that I am dismissing Jurgens, or anything you want to quote from his compendium. I think he did a fine job, for the most part.

 

[Nan_S]

Hi Nan,

Nothing explicit was said about creating the material God used to create everything until the late second century, just like I said.

And how can you say this was “never questioned,” when I already quoted Origen and Tertullian saying it was questioned? (Not to mention, the quotes from Justin and Clement saying God created from pre-existing material.)

You might claim that nothing explicit was said until the late 2nd century (which would be well after 150AD), but only if you read “made out of nothing the things that exist” and “brought out of nonexistence into existence everything that is” (The Shepherd of Hermas, 80AD) to not be explicit.

When Aristides wrote in the early 2nd century, which was still well within the lifetimes of men who were personally taught by the apostles, and were in a position to publicly admonish invalid teaching, he was also pretty explicit. “Let us proceed, then, O king, to the elements themselves, so that we may demonstrate concerning them that they are not gods, but corruptible and changeable things, produced out of the nonexistent by him that is truly God” (*Apology *4 [A.D. 140]).

I assure you, suggesting that these two very early teachings were unclear is such a convoluted interpretation it definitely puts you in the minority, except perhaps in Mormon circles.

Origen and Tertullian didn’t question creation out of nothing. They did observe that others questioned it, but they wrote and taught to the contrary because they maintained that the dissenters were wrong.

God ultimately created everything out of nothing, but not everything was directly formed that way. Sometimes he created elemental and component parts first. Nothing contradictory with that.

 

[Benadam]

BDawga quote:

Mormons, on the other hand, reject the idea of Divine Simplicity. Therefore, we can have any number of of Divine Beings who are “One” in a way that doesn’t require absolute simplicity.

Thanks again BDawg. I appreciate your time and thought provoking response.

The ECF that you mention and I’m no scholar, I believe that what you say is true, but you are implying that they would teach the nature of God without confirming that it didn’t violate the continuity of the Sacred Scriptures.

The scriptures reveal that the oneness Jesus wants to share with man is not the Divine Oneness of the Trinity.

The oneness shared by humanity cannot penetrate the oneness of the Trinity and I’ll explain how the Sacred Scriptures reveal that:

The bible reveals three realities that can claim to have ‘always been’ The Creator, The Word and the Spirit that hovered over the deep. Only these three can claim to have always been.

Divine simplicity isn’t violated by the number of Divine Persons involved…

The absolute, that subjects all things is existence that ‘always was’.

The beginning of all things is subjected by what has ‘always been’ In all ways creation is subjective in that it’s origin is known by it’s relation to what has always been…

That is the Oneness of the Trinity that no other can possibly penetrate. No angel, no human, besides God can know that oneness. The Persons of the Trinity are Identicle in every way knowable without God’s revelation of self. They differ only in relation to themselves.

All words fall short of being able to express existence that always was because of it’s absolute simplicity.

Absolute simplicity is that existence that always was as scripture implies when God said ‘Let there be light’ . God willed light and without mention of another but what inherits existence from light is darkness. The One and only creature that exists is divided. Absolute simplicity is not in anything that has a beginning.

Even light cannot be called absolutely simple because it’s very existence is inherited by darkness. God didn’t create darkness, darkness is the expression of subjective simplicity. Darkness is the expression of subjectivity. This original division is so sublime that God divdes it Himself to form the first day. In the light of the first day there was only darkness… No other creature existed but light. What is darkness if not a creation? The expression of light’s subjectivity and complexity.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Hi Beccs,

No, the discussion was not about the Incarnation. For instance, here’s what Tertullian said about it.

““For who will deny that God is a body, although ‘God is a Spirit?’ For Spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form.” (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 7, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers 3:602.)

You take great liberties with Tertullian’s teachings. You take them out their contextual meaning, as I have already pointed out, and apply Mormon beliefs to them.

Read the entire section,“On God”, and you will see what you have done.

"Those, moreover, who, on account of the expression “God is a Spirit,” think that He is a body, are to be answered, I think, in the following manner. It is the custom of sacred Scripture, when it wishes to designate anything opposed to this gross and solid body, to call it spirit, as in the expression, “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life,” where there can be no doubt that by “letter” are meant bodily things, and by “spirit” intellectual things, which we also term “spiritual.”

“Having refuted, then, as well as we could, every notion which might suggest that we were to think of God as in any degree corporeal, we go on to say that, according to strict truth, God is incomprehensible, and incapable of being measured.”

I don’t mean to imply that Tertullian had an anthropomorphic concept of God, however. He didn’t. He just believed (as do the LDS) that “spirit” is itself a material substance.

He believed no such thing. He clearly describe “spirit” as being unknown and incomprehensible but does describe “knowing” the spiritual nature of God the Father as something only the soul can know, which knowing he calls intellect. I believe this is what you are grasping onto, but it is just that. Tertullian is not speaking to your Mormon beliefs.

On the other hand, if you think that the current doctrine of the Trinity was being taught in New Testament times, you have another think coming, too.

Do I? Now who is assuming blind faith?

The point in sharing this story is that the Trinity is one of those doctrines that both Anglicans and Catholics accepted as basic to the faith, but which had clearly undergone quite a bit of “development” over time.

No development in doctrine. It is there, in the Bible, you just refuse, or are unable by virtue of your Mormon view, to see it.

I suggest studying the entry at the old Catholic Encyclopedia. It uses a lot of Catholic terms that you should not interpret with Mormon definitions.

Yes, it is old, and does have some out of date information. But re: the Holy Trinity, the scriptural references are brought out and emphasized.

 

[Catholic_Dude]

our next topic: “WHAT is God.” I think you are right that how we view “omnipotence” is directly related to that.

This thread isnt about what God is?

Should we do the “creatio ex nihilo” discussion here, and then make a new thread for the next part of the topic? (I just hate to make people wade through hundreds of posts in a single thread.

I guess I don’t know what you mean by “What God is” if the Nature of God is not involved. If you want to start a new thread dealing with the verse about being created “in His image,” I would be interested in that.

Isn’t the historical/cultural background of the scriptures important for understanding their meaning? I thought that’s what the Pontifical Biblical Institute was about, for instance, and in fact I quoted a Catholic scholar who published through there in one of my posts.

It is the historical/cultural background from the perspective of a non Catholic nor Mormon. A Catholic scholar would not say, in good conscience, things such as creation ex nihilo is “nowhere found in the Hebrew Bible,” or that it arose in the second century, especially given ex nihilo is a dogmatic teaching. If they believe it is nowhere found in the OT or in the NT (since it is first century) then they have no business remaining Catholic.

The Pontifical Biblical Commission is merely an opinion branch of the Church, it was downgraded decades ago from a teaching branch. In my, and many other Catholics’, opinion it is dominated by very liberal scholars who regularly implicitly undermine the Catholic faith (eg making claims that create doubts as to whether Scripture is inspired).

I don’t understand why you think this passage must be interpreted as referring to creatio ex nihilo. Here’s the NAB translation, which is easier to read. By faith we understand that the universe was ordered by the word of God, so that what is visible came into being through the invisible.So here it talks about God “framing” or “ordering” the universe

It is the second half that I was pointing to. The contrasting of visible to invisible is clearly a contrast between existing and non-existing. Taken any other way it would not make sense.

This passage says that Jesus made everthing that was made, as Zerinus already pointed out.

I assume you are talking about his comments in post 33:This is a rather interesting verse. It doesn’t say that God made everything out of nothing either. On the contrary, it supports creation out of something. It says “without him was not anything made THAT WAS MADE.” The implication is that there were some things that were not made. All that were made, were made by Him. Therefore there were some things that were NOT made at all, therefore they were not made by Him either. That is the implication of that verse.
Where is the implication that there were things that were not made? The plain reading of “without him was not anything made that was made” means ‘nothing that exists was made apart from Jesus’ power’. The claim above is very weak also considering the context of Jn 1:3, the context is putting Jesus equal with God and putting all this in contrast to creation with Jesus existing before creation, to say this implies existing material undermines John’s whole point in Jn 1:1ff. John would actually be saying this, “In the beginning was pre-existing material and the Word.”

I don’t expect you to accept this point of view based on an argument from authority. I tried to outline some of the evidence these scholars use to make their case, though. I would hope that this evidence carries some weight with you.

It doesn’t carry any weight because it goes against what the Catholic Church teaches, and if I believe the CC that implies there is historical/scriptural/logical proof for its teachings. For them to say X is not found in Scripture when I believe X to be found in scripture boils down to an argument from authority.
It would be similar to me quoting various historians who insisting the Jews were monotheists while Mormonism teaches polytheism was always believed.

I agree. That was my point. These scholars say that the ancients gave no indication whatsoever, that they were using it in an absolute sense when talking about creation. In fact, many texts explicitly say otherwise.

But “no indication whatsoever” is not a valid argument here because when talking about creation of the universe the creature can hardly comprehend it. We wouldn’t expect detailed or precise scientific terms describing the indescribable, especially from primitive cultures. The biggest and best argument the Bible employs for the deity of Christ is by contrasting Jesus to all of creation. God and creation are polar opposite thoughts, finite versus infinite, eternal versus temporal. Put Jesus on the ‘non created’ end of the equation and you have equated Him with God.

The Jews and Christians had no concept of atoms, electrons, or other sub-atomic particles, thus it is bogus to insist they had pre-existing matter in mind when they spoke of creation. The only thing they could envision was visible creation, and they wouldn’t dare imply these things visible to the naked eye were pre-existing building blocks.

Since Catholics make allowances for “doctrinal development,” ala John Henry Newman, it seems like a good Catholic could hold that position.

It could have just been something the Jews and early Christians didn’t give much detailed thought to, but once theological development started to take place this issue came up and began to be addressed more seriously.

LDS view “theology” differently than you might. I’m a scientist, so I’ll use that as an analogy for how we view it. Scientists make observations (collect data) about the world, and then we try to make up explanations for what we see. Afterward, we try to make other observations that our explanations also predict or preclude, in order to test our theories. We never consider any of our theories the “final truth,” because past experience has taught us that it is very likely we will someday make observations that will force us to revise our explanations.

To Catholics, what you just said is horrifying. The idea that there is no certainty, that dogma can be revised, even whole sale, is astonishing. This is not to be confused with developing or clarifying a doctrine. If creation ex materia is not a “final truth” then you are saying it could be changed to ex nihilo tomorrow, without the blink of an eye. To me this is the very danger of the “blind leading the blind” Jesus warned about and the “infants blown around with every new wind of doctrine” that Paul warns against. We are dealing with the Truth here, either there is an anchor or we are free floating around at sea.

Latter-day Saints approach “theology” in much the same way. Our “data” is revelations from God (in the Bible, etc.) When we “do theology,” we are trying to fit all the data together into sort of a coherent story that explains everything. However, we can’t ever call any of these theological explanations the “final truth,” because it may be that God will reveal something else that will force us to put the puzzle pieces together in a different way to make sense of it all.

Dogma shouldnt and cannot change. Eternal truths are always true. God is always one, God is always almighty, creature is always inferior to Creator, etc. God can reveal more, in which case we can build a better understanding, but never contradict past truths.

Catholics, on the other hand, don’t believe in new public revelation, so “doing theology” takes on much greater significance. So if you want to go off into theological reflections with us, that’s fine, but you should realize that we probably won’t take it as seriously as you do.

This is a scary thought to me because in essence you are saying Truth is relative. Can you imagine one day your church teaching that rape or murder was ok because of a new revelation? That is theoretically possible with the picture you have presented, yet if Truth is unchanging then murder which is intrinsically evil would always and at all times be evil and not allowed. In short, philosophy and Theology cannot have any place in your religion. Theology is by definition the study of God, but if that is subject to change then you cannot really study God beyond surface level.

Earlier you complained that some of the scholars I quoted don’t have any “authority” in either of our traditions, but I think that sort of misses an important point. The entire issue rests on who has the authority to interpret the scriptures, and we can’t agree on that. On the other hand, we all think scholarly and scientific work is useful (although not perfect) for finding out things, so why can’t our discussion be framed around this kind of common ground? We can all make arguments, and we will either find them persuasive, or not.

I understand what you are saying now, there is really very limited ground by which we can both agree we can talk from. You mention scholarly and scientific grounds, but that fails pretty significantly for your side when it comes to issues like archeology and such for the Book of Mormon civilizations (another topic for another thread). I agree with your last line the most, we are basically two conflicting philosophies trying to present the best argument. My main argument is to consider the concept of “omnipotent” and realize that in its fullest sense that means nothing can exist apart from God, who must will it to even exist and will to maintain it in existence.

I don’t know how far behind in this thread I am, but I will try to catch up.

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Hi again, CDude,

I have a couple more comments on this verse (Hebrews 11:7). Some people claim this refers to *creatio ex nihilo *because it says that the visible world was created from the “invisible”. They say that the “invisible” must be nothingness.

However, it would be nice to know how Jewish people at that time would have interpreted this expression. (The target audience of the Epistle to the Hebrews was Jewish, obviously.) Well, it happens that 2 Enoch (also called The Secrets of Enoch) is a Jewish document that most scholars think was written in the late first century A.D.–about the same time as Hebrews was written–and it uses the same expression.“Before anything existed at all, from the very beginning, whatever exists I created from the non-existent, and from the invisible the visible… For before any visible things had come into existence, I, the ONE, moved around in the invisible things, like the sun, from east to west and from west to east.” (2 Enoch, in James Charlesworth, ed., J. I. Anderson, trans. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1983, 142.)The translator of this document explains,The impression remains that God was not the only existent being or thing from the very first … God made the existent out of the non-existent, the visible out of the non-visible. So the invisible things co-existed with God before he began to make anything… Vs. 4 is quite explicit on this point: Before any of the visible things had come into existence, God was moving around among the invisible things. (see note f on p. 142)
So much for the “invisible” necessarily referring to nothingness.

I am obviously behind in my reading and responses because I just talked about this before I read this post.

I don’t given the “translators” opinion much weight in this situation. I dont know what the context of 2 Enoch is, especially considering the ‘…’ in there, nor do I know who or by whom it was written.

The text as it stands now is confusing. It makes mention of “non-existent,” which supports nihilo more than materia. Also phrases like “invisible things, like the sun,” seem odd considering the sun is hardly invisible. And the phrase “from east to west, and west to east,” could either be poetic or just human language for what is incomprehensible.

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Let me set you straight, here. We do indeed believe that God the Father may have had a Father. That’s right out of Joseph Smith’s King Follett Discourse.

This cuts at the heart of omnipotence and even creation ex nihilo. If you believe God had a God then immediately that means God was created and is not all powerful nor is he eternal. And this isnt even getting into what you mean by “father” (ie biological fatherhood).

Terms like “almighty” are relative rather than absolute terms, in this view God is “almighty” in the same sense a man is almighty in relation to an ant.

We also believe that there are differences in glory among those Beings who are gods.

Then again, God cannot be “almighty” if there are degrees of omnipotence.

After all, Jesus prayed to the Father, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever” (Matt. 6:13).

Jesus told us that is how we are to pray, not what He prayed.

But even if there are differences in glory among Divine Beings, on the other hand, they all have the same power.
“All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matt. 28:18).

This power given was in relation to the glorified human nature (Resurrected) of Jesus made King.
Phil 2:8 talks about the humbling of Jesus, taking on human nature, and the glorifying of Jesus which is His Resurrected glorified body. The “mission” Jesus was sent on was officially complete and in turn He is sending the Apostles on a mission.

Furthermore, all Divine Beings are completely ONE in mind, will, purpose, love, and covenant. Jesus prayed for his disciples, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21).

You can be “one in mind” without each “mind” being equal. In fact each created mind contributes differently and to different degrees. When we pray “Thy Will be done,” we are “one in mind” with God.

So there you have it. God the Father is the most “omnipotent” being around. And so is Jesus, since he inherited “all power… in heaven and in earth.” And any of us can inherit the same thing as Jesus. “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together” (Romans 8:17). But it doesn’t matter that there is more than one omnipotent being, because they are all completely unified in will. In effect, there is really only ONE GOD, in this sense.

I would strongly disagree with the way you strung together quotes here. We are only “joint heirs” in the sense we are united to Christ’s Body (the Church) while Christ is the Head.

Our doctrine of God is similar to yours in the following respects:

1. We both believe there is One God (but in different senses of the word.)
2. We both believe that more than one Person is God.

It really inst similar because we use “one” and “Person” very differently.

Our doctrine of God is different than yours in the following respects:

1. We believe that more than one Being comprises the One God. And therefore, we are also comfortable talking about multiple “gods”. You believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one Being.

What you are describing is polytheism, something unacceptable to the Jews and Christians.

1. We believe that more beings/persons can inherit the Divine Nature, and so become gods, or part of the One God. You believe that there is an insurmountable barrier between human nature and Divine nature, so this is not possible.

Yes because it implies God is not perfect and complete. He is “missing” parts until you come along, and that He has “room to grow”.

Imagine God was the ocean, us humans can only participate in the Divine Nature in the sense a cup can be filled to the brim with ocean water.

If God can create matter out of absolute nothingness, then obviously the Mormon definition of omnipotence is too limited.

**THIS is the ultimate question right here.
Do you believe God can create matter out of nothing? I know you believe He didn’t when creating the world, but CAN He if He wanted to? (is it a matter of choosing not to, or not being able to)
**
If you answer ‘no’ to that question then you have admitted the Mormon view is limited.

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Your argument almost works, except for the qualifier Z put on his statement …then you would be right.

We were discussing omnipotence. Z introduced a hypothetical statement. He hypothesized that we might have been discussing Eternal Progression rather than Omniscence. IF we said that there is being greater than God who created something out of nothing, and God took that and made the rest…

He then declared that Eternal Progression is correct. … then you would be right.

Next, he moved the discussion back to omnipotence. BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT WE ARE SAYING.

I admit I have been playing catch up most of this thread, but IF (no pun intended) I am reading this right I see exactly what you are saying.

The issue can be summed up like this:
IF we said there is a country with 50 states and you called that the United States…you would be correct. BUT we are NOT talking about the issue of the United States (right now).

The “IF” comment is factual and accurate, so I believe Nan is in the clear here.

Objecting to Nan’s comments by saying that the “IF” (factual) comment doesn’t matter right now, which I assume Zerinus was saying, is making a mountain out of a molehill.

THATS just how I see it (though I admit I am playing catch up on my reading).

 

[PaulDupre]

**THIS is the ultimate question right here.
Do you believe God can create matter out of nothing? I know you believe He didn’t when creating the world, but CAN He if He wanted to? (is it a matter of choosing not to, or not being able to)
**
If you answer ‘no’ to that question then you have admitted the Mormon view is limited.

Joseph Smith taught:

“I might with boldness proclaim from the house-tops that God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all.”

• Joseph Smith’s King Follet Sermon
  (As printed in History of the Church, Vol. 6, p. 302-317)

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Your God is the impossible God of Greek philosophy, not the God of the Bible. He only exists in the imaginations of philosophers, and has no existence in the world of reality.

Actually I think you have this exactly backwards. The pagan gods of the Greeks were often nothing more than human projections (gods created in the image of men). To demand that God has an “existence in the world of reality,” is a dangerous proposition to make considering God transcends reality. We only know God through diving revelation, and even that requires the Truth to sometimes be expressed in simple “human terms.”

LDS doctrine teaches that Jesus is eternally God:
Book of Mormon, Title Page:

. . . And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that JESUS is the CHRIST, the ETERNAL GOD, manifesting himself unto all nations . . .

2 Nephi 26:

12 And as I spake concerning the convincing of the Jews, that Jesus is the very Christ, it must needs be that the Gentiles be convinced also that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God

Mosiah 3:

5 For behold, the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst men, working mighty miracles, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of diseases.

D&C 39:

1 Hearken and listen to the voice of him who is from all eternity to all eternity, the Great I AM, even Jesus Christzerinus

If Jesus was “eternally God,” then why was BDawg making the claim “all power has been given to me” means Jesus was not always God until Jesus got the power?

(BDawg feel free to answer)

 

[zerinus]

If Jesus was “eternally God,” then why was BDawg making the claim “all power has been given to me” means Jesus was not always God until Jesus got the power?

(BDawg feel free to answer)

That is a question that I you should try to answer yourself. It is in your teaching that Jesus is “eternally God”. So how do you explain the biblical statement that “all power has been given to me”? What is your answer to that? Is the Bible contradicting itself, according to your theology? If not, what is the explanation?

zerinus

 

[BDawg]

It doesn’t carry any weight because it goes against what the Catholic Church teaches, and if I believe the CC that implies there is historical/scriptural/logical proof for its teachings.

Hi CDude,

I understand. I don’t mean to try to force anything down your throat. I’m just trying to make the best argument I can for my position. And if the scholarly stuff doesn’t carry much weight with you, maybe it will with someone else, so I won’t make a big deal about it if we can’t agree on an interpretation of things.

The Jews and Christians had no concept of atoms, electrons, or other sub-atomic particles, thus it is bogus to insist they had pre-existing matter in mind when they spoke of creation. The only thing they could envision was visible creation, and they wouldn’t dare imply these things visible to the naked eye were pre-existing building blocks.

The evidence from 2 Enoch was very clear that they thought “the invisible” was not absolute nothingness, at least. If you have a contemporary text that demonstrates otherwise, please bring it forward.

To Catholics, what you just said is horrifying. The idea that there is no certainty, that dogma can be revised, even whole sale, is astonishing. This is not to be confused with developing or clarifying a doctrine. If creation ex materia is not a “final truth” then you are saying it could be changed to ex nihilo tomorrow, without the blink of an eye. To me this is the very danger of the “blind leading the blind” Jesus warned about and the “infants blown around with every new wind of doctrine” that Paul warns against. We are dealing with the Truth here, either there is an anchor or we are free floating around at sea.

Don’t read too much into what I said. In science, some of our information/theories are so clear that it’s hard to conceive how their essence could change that much in the future, no matter how much new data we uncover. We still have to hold back a little, because we may not have all the details correct, but the point is that some theories deserve a whole lot of confidence. It’s the same way with doctrine. If our revelations say that God created ex materia, and that matter CANNOT be created, then it’s hard to imagine how another revelation could turn that on its head. It’s completely clear. It’s just data, not a theory that can be overturned by new data, if you see what I mean.

This is a scary thought to me because in essence you are saying Truth is relative.

That’s not how I meant it. What I meant was that we humans don’t always have all the puzzle pieces. So when we get a new one, we might have to rearrange them a bit. I did not say that getting a new puzzle piece means we have to throw out an old one.

 

[BDawg]

You might claim that nothing explicit was said until the late 2nd century (which would be well after 150AD), but only if you read “made out of nothing the things that exist” and “brought out of nonexistence into existence everything that is” (The Shepherd of Hermas, 80AD) to not be explicit.

When Aristides wrote in the early 2nd century, which was still well within the lifetimes of men who were personally taught by the apostles, and were in a position to publicly admonish invalid teaching, he was also pretty explicit. “Let us proceed, then, O king, to the elements themselves, so that we may demonstrate concerning them that they are not gods, but corruptible and changeable things, produced out of the nonexistent by him that is truly God” (*Apology *4 [A.D. 140]).

Hi Nan,

Here’s what Blake Ostler (a Mormon philosopher) had to say about Hermas, here.

C&C next cite The Shepherd of Hermas, a text from the middle second century: "God who dwells in heaven and created that which is out of non-existence (ktisas ek tou me ontos)."81 It is extremely significant that when the first “scriptural” arguments in history were formulated to support the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo by Irenaeus (about 185 A.D.) and Origen (220 A.D.) they do not cite scriptures from the canon accepted by evangelicals and Mormons. Rather, they cite The Shepherd of Hermas and 2 Maccabees 7:28.82 The reason they cite these texts rather than other scriptures is obvious - they did not know of any scriptures which supported the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. It is ironic therefore that even these two texts do not teach the dogma of creatio ex nihilo. It is also significant that Hermas adopts the technical language for creation from relative non-being ek tou me ontos which makes it fairly clear that God created what is from potential being, not from absolute nothing or ex nihilo.83 The same analysis applies to a verse from Hermas not cited by C&C which states: "One must believe that God is one and that he has created and ordered and made them from the non-existence (ek me ontos) into existence…"84 As Hubler argued:
Once again, ek me ontos alone cannot be taken as absolute denial of a material substrate. By itself this definition is insufficient to carry the burden of a decisive and well-defined position because both ek and on are notoriously equivocal. Ek does not necessarily designate material cause, but it can be used temporally. On does not necessarily refer to absolute non-being, but the non-existence of what later came to be. To read creatio ex nihilo in Hermes (sic) goes far beyond the warrant of the text, which makes no clear claims to the presence or absence of material and provides no discussion of the position.85

The Greek text implies relative nothingness, whereas the texts that talk about creatio ex nihilo use the more emphatic ex ouk onton. (2 Maccabees does use the more emphatic form, but is obviously not a philosophical treatise, so the scholars tend to discount it as evidence for an early version of creatio ex nihilo.

Anyway, I’ve never seen anyone address Aristides, so I can’t say anything about that one.

Origen and Tertullian didn’t question creation out of nothing. They did observe that others questioned it, but they wrote and taught to the contrary because they maintained that the dissenters were wrong.

That’s what I said.

Anyway, nice post. Thanks for the (name removed by moderator)ut.

 

[BDawg]

Then again, God cannot be “almighty” if there are degrees of omnipotence.

Hi CDude,

I never said there are degrees of omnipotence. I said there are degrees of glory. The Bible is full of texts that talk about doing such and such “for the glory of God,” or giving glory to God. What’s the point of that, if He already has all possible glory?

If you answer ‘no’ to that question then you have admitted the Mormon view is limited.

Z and I both already said that the Mormon view of “omnipotence” is more limited than yours. Some things just aren’t possible for anyone or anything, so they can’t be included in a definition of “all power.”

I hope this isn’t going to devolve into a “my God is bigger than yours” argument. The argument should be about who has the correct definition.

 

[BDawg]

Joseph Smith taught:
“I might with boldness proclaim from the house-tops that God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all.”

• Joseph Smith’s King Follet Sermon
  (As printed in History of the Church, Vol. 6, p. 302-317)

Thanks, Paul. Let’s say it again.

The LDS definition of “omnipotence” is more limited than the Catholic definition, because we don’t think certain things (like creating/destroying matter or spirit) are possible for anyone.

I don’t think this is “admitting” anything. It’s just the way we see the universe. Feel free to disagree with it, but for Pete’s sake, don’t act like anyone is trying to hide it.

 

[BDawg]

Actually I think you have this exactly backwards. The pagan gods of the Greeks were often nothing more than human projections (gods created in the image of men).

Hi again, CDude,

The philosophers were the greatest critics of the pagan pantheons. They thought the whole business of gods fighting against each other, having romps in the hay with stray humans, etc., was silly. That’s why their thought was so easily co-opted into Christian and Jewish theology. There really were significant similarities. Anyway, here is a quotation from Plutarch, a Neoplatonist who flourished in the early Christian period.
Socrates and Plato held that (God is) the One, the single self-existent nature, the monadic, the real Being, the good: and all this variety of names points immediately to mind. God therefore is mind, a separate species, that is to say what is purely immaterial and unconnected with anything passible. (Plutarch, quoted in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 14:16, translated by E.H. Gifford, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1903, 812.)
Here’s another one from Numenius, who was a Middle Platonist.
But let no one laugh, if I affirm that the name of the incorporeal is “essence” and “being.” And the cause of the name “being” is that it has not been generated nor will be destroyed, nor is it subject to any other motion at all, nor any change for better or for worse; but is simple and unchangeable, and in the same idea, and neither willingly departs from its sameness, nor is compelled by any other to depart. (Numenius, quoted by Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 11:10, p. 566._

If Jesus was “eternally God,” then why was BDawg making the claim “all power has been given to me” means Jesus was not always God until Jesus got the power?

(BDawg feel free to answer)

Before the Incarnation, we believe Jesus was God, but had not yet inherited “all power in heaven and earth” in himself.

 

[AMDGtoo]

Socrates and Plato held that (God is) the One, the single self-existent nature, the monadic, the real Being
​

Why not also mention that the Jews also saw God as one as evidenced by their Shema, “Hear O Israel, our God is one Lord” (Deut 6:4)? And you surely cannot claim that they were Greek pagans too!​

 

[BDawg]

Hi guys,

One of the great tragedies (from my perspective) of the Christian adoption of a philosophical definition of God and creatio ex nihilo was that it put everything into two categories: 1) God, who is uncreated in any sense, completely “other” than any other nature, and 2) everyone and everything else, who are created in every sense. This caused all kinds of problems for Christian theology that never came up when people believed in an anthropomorphic God. In my next few posts, I’ll highlight some of these problems.

Problem #1: The Incarnation
The New Testament is clear that Jesus is really God, and *really a man. *I think we can all agree on that, at least. But how is that possible if the Divine Nature is completely other than human nature? After a few centuries, Christians (at least most of them) settled on the idea that Jesus actually had two natures: the Divine Nature, and a complete human nature–both a body and human soul. But like I said, this took a few centuries to work out! How did the earliest Christians view the Incarnation? J.N.D. Kelly, a famous Oxford patristics scholar, wrote that the first Christians had what he called a “Spirit Christology.”

The Christological theory (if theory is an apt name for what was usually a pre-reflective supposition) which commanded most support, and which lingered on beyond the second century, may be described as a Spirit-Christology. By this is meant the view that in the historical Jesus Christ the pre-existent Son of God, Who is divine spirit, united Himself with human nature. This could take a variety of forms, according to the underlying conception. The idea seems sometimes to have been that the pre-existent Christ-Spirit inswelt the man Jesus, sometimes that He actually became man. ‘Barnabas’ provides an example of the former, with his statements that the Son of God ‘came’ or ‘manifested himself’ in flexh, or in the form of flesh, and that the body which Christ offered in sacrifice was ‘the receptacle of spirit’. An even more impressive illustration is Hermas’s theory that 'God caused the holy, pre-existent spirit which created the whole of creation to dwell in flesh that He desired. (J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, Revised Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978, 143-144.
​

Some other examples of “Spirit Christology” include statements by St. Hipploytus of Rome, St. Ignatius of Antioch, and St. John.
“The Logos we know to have received a body from a virgin.” (Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 10:29, in ANF 5:152)

“God the Word did dwell in a human body, being within it as the Word, even as the soul also is in the body. . . ." (Ignatius, Philadelphians 6, in ANF 1:83.)

“the Word became flesh” (John 1:14)
But if the Word was just like a spirit inside a human body, how could Jesus really be human? If “God” is an eternally unchanging, simple essence, that’s a big problem. Eusebius of Caesarea put it this way in the 4th century.
“For if it is unreasonable to suppose that the unbegotten and immutable essence of the almighty God was changed into the form of man . . . .” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1:2:8, in NPNF Series 2:1:83.)
In the third century, Origen expressed the problem this way.
“But if the immortal God – the Word – by assuming a mortal body and a human soul, appears to Celsus to undergo a change and transformation, let him learn that the Word, still remaining essentially the Word, suffers none of those things which are suffered by the body or the soul . . . .” (Origen, Against Celsus 4:15, in ANF 4:503)
That’s why some Christian thinkers settled on the idea that Jesus must have had a human soul in addition to the Divine Nature. I think Origen was one of the first, but the details weren’t all worked out until the Third Council of Constantinople in 680 AD, where it was settled that Jesus had “two natures” and “two wills”.

Back in the second century, when lots of Christians were just starting to accept a philosophical definition of God, the biggest problem was the Gnostics, who reasoned that if Jesus was really something Divine, then he couldn’t REALLY have been human. He only “seemed” to be a human. (The technical term for this is “Docetism,” from the Greek verb dokein, “to seem.”)

None of us believes that was really the message of the New Testament, but I think the Gnostics had a good point. That is, the philosophical definition of God as an eternally unchanging, simple essence is not really compatible with the Incarnation, if the Incarnation consisted of the Word inhabiting a human body. And yet, that’s exactly how all the earliest Christians seem to have viewed the Incarnation!

My conclusion is that the philosophical definition of God is simply wrong. When Christians adopted it, they had to eventually change how they viewed the Incarnation.

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