What is Considered Doctrine in the LDS Church

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Aside from polygamy and priesthood, what has changed doctrinally?
All Native Americans are descendants of the Lamanites.
Adam is God
Your god was once a man, on another planet, worshiping another god.

That’s a start. There are stranger things I was taught, but I don’t want you to feel picked on.
 
The changes in the B of M were minor technical changes. Nothing substantial was changed.
Nothing substantial?

The handwritten printer’s edition says:
& I looked & beheld the Lamb of God that he was taken by the [illegible: people] yea the everlasting God was judged of the world & I saw & bear record. - 1 Ne pg 17
The original 1830 published version of the BoM said:
And I looked and beheld the Lamb of God, that he was taken by the people; yea, the Everlasting God, was judged of the world; and I saw and bear record. - 1 Ne pg 26
Behold, the virgin which thou seest, is the mother of God, after the manner of the flesh. - 1 Ne pg 25
Later versions read:
And I looked and beheld the Lamb of God, that he was taken by the people; yea, the **Son of **the everlasting God was judged of the world; and I saw and bear record. - 1 Ne 11:32
Behold, the virgin which thou seest is the mother of **the Son of **God, after the manner of the flesh. - 1 Ne 11:18
Those changes transform the BoM’s view of the nature of God, from trinitarian to non-trinitarian - a major doctrinal shift. In the later revisions of the BoM, Jesus is no longer the Everlasting God. I’d say that is a substantial change.
 
No, we don’t. But we don’t pretend that we do.
Actually, Catholics do get to vote on the Pope. You have heard of the cardinals of the church convening in the Sistene Chapel right? Sorry, couldn’t resist.😃

While the laity of the Church doesn’t get a “vote” exactly, there is (name removed by moderator)ut provided to the Holy See regarding the individual who is being considered for elevation to Bishop, Archbishop, etc., These are in fact taken into consideration during the process.
 
Aside from polygamy and priesthood, what has changed doctrinally?
In getting answers about what has changed it all depends on who you listen to. On this forum, Mormons claiming to be active members of the church, and also claiming to be knowledgeable, e.g., often claiming teaching experience, have at various times asserted ~
  • Heavenly Father is not an exalted man and that has never been Mormon Doctrine, it’s something that was misunderstood from some early meeting of the LDS church.
  • Humans cannot progress to Godhood, and it has never been Mormon Doctrine that they could.
These are just a couple of examples, but you can see the obvious difference between what you assert and what they have asserted. The differences are so striking it’s hard to believe that you and those who made the statements are members of the same faith.

You are actually one of the few Mormons, as another poster has noted, who has been willing to address issues in a straightforward way. Your answers aren’t snarky, which is refreshing, and you don’t run from difficult issues, you take them on. So while we may not agree with your beliefs, we can respect your views.
 
All Native Americans are descendants of the Lamanites.
Adam is God
Your god was once a man, on another planet, worshiping another god.

That’s a start. There are stranger things I was taught, but I don’t want you to feel picked on.
The first two were not doctrine, they were opinions and are not supported. The third is half opinion and half doctrine or understanding. If it was a doctrine then there would be a practice and a policy attached to it. We are getting into hair splitting now. As far as I know my God and yours are the same. I just believe His nature is different from your understanding. There is only one Jesus Christ and one God the Father and one Holy GHost . I think they are seprate personages and you think they are all in rolled up in one.
 
Robert, unless something has changed recently that my Mormon friends haven’t told me about, the restriction on polygamy is only “on the Earth”. The practice has been taken away from “the Earth” but not from Heaven.

In other words, in the Mormon “Celestial Kingdom” polygamy is still OK, if not the “norm”. (They also believe that there will be 7 righteous women for every righteous man 😃 so no wonder they have to have polygamy ~ so that every one of those righteous women can have a husband! Eternal progression and populating planets and being the Gods and Goddesses of those planets needs to continue!)

I just wanted to make sure you knew that polygamy has not been entirely disavowed by the Mormon “church” ~ only that the practice has been taken “from the Earth”. They still believe in it, technically. They just don’t practice it HERE.
Thanks. That’s very interesting.
 
As far as I know my God and yours are the same. I just believe His nature is different from your understanding. There is only one Jesus Christ and one God the Father and one Holy GHost . I think they are seprate personages and you think they are all in rolled up in one.
There are those who would disagree for a variety of reasons. For example, if the Holy Spirit/Holy Ghost is the same for Catholics as for Mormons, then why does the Catholic receive a different message than the Mormon? God is not a God of confusion and chaos.
 
Nothing substantial?

The handwritten printer’s edition says:

The original 1830 published version of the BoM said:

Later versions read:

Those changes transform the BoM’s view of the nature of God, from trinitarian to non-trinitarian - a major doctrinal shift. In the later revisions of the BoM, Jesus is no longer the Everlasting God. I’d say that is a substantial change.
You are talking about someone’s notes Paul. I would not call the printer’s notes dispositive.
 
The first two were not doctrine, they were opinions and are not supported. The third is half opinion and half doctrine or understanding. If it was a doctrine then there would be a practice and a policy attached to it. We are getting into hair splitting now. As far as I know my God and yours are the same. I just believe His nature is different from your understanding. There is only one Jesus Christ and one God the Father and one Holy GHost . I think they are seprate personages and you think they are all in rolled up in one.
Sort of…

We believe that there is one and only one God, whose nature it is to exist as a family of three distinct persons, whom we call the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit according to the limited knowledge that God has revealed about the relationship among these three persons.
 
There are those who would disagree for a variety of reasons. For example, if the Holy Spirit/Holy Ghost is the same for Catholics as for Mormons, then why does the Catholic receive a different message than the Mormon? God is not a God of confusion and chaos.
I know you will find this hard to believe Melanie but we likley believe our own version is right and the other guys isn’t. :hmmm:
 
You are talking about someone’s notes Paul. I would not call the printer’s notes dispositive.
I just thought it was significant that the printer’s copy agreed with the original 1830 printed version. It makes it less likely that the current version is a return to the original manuscript rather than a modern alteration to reflect a change in doctrine.

Also, I believe the printer’s copy is not “somebody’s notes”, but Oliver Cowdery’s transcription of the original manuscript, and that it was approved by Joseph Smith.
 
Sort of…

We believe that there is one and only one God, whose nature it is to exist as a family of three distinct persons, whom we call the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit according to the limited knowledge that God has revealed about the relationship among these three persons.
The Triune or Trinitarian view but it isn’t supported in the bible. It is something originating in Greek philosophy I think. A serious scholar will have to confirm this but I think it was Platonic in nature before it was adopted during one of the later councils at Nicea.
 
I just thought it was significant that the printer’s copy agreed with the original 1830 printed version. It makes it less likely that the current version is a return to the original manuscript rather than a modern alteration to reflect a change in doctrine.

Also, I believe the printer’s copy is not “somebody’s notes”, but Oliver Cowdery’s transcription of the original manuscript, and that it was approved by Joseph Smith.
You may know more about that than I do so I can’t say. I don’t get much into that because I just don’t have much interst in it. I will let the really smart guys do all the leg work and then tell me so I don’t have to. I don’t even know which LDS scholars are working in the subject area. I will wait until someone posts a You Tube presentation.
 
The Triune or Trinitarian view but it isn’t supported in the bible. It is something originating in Greek philosophy I think. A serious scholar will have to confirm this but I think it was Platonic in nature before it was adopted during one of the later councils at Nicea.
The concept of a triune God would have been unknown to Plato. I think what you are referring to are Platonic vocabulary that was adapted by the early church to describe the trinity and other Christian concepts, which were widely accepted by the church fathers long before Nicea. One of the difficulties the early church had was finding the vocabulary to express the concepts implicit in the truths revealed by Jesus and taught by the apostles. That is why as you read through the ECFs in chronological order, you see this development of ecclesial vocabulary that give voice to these New Testament concepts of God. Later groups, like the Protestants and the Mormons, are the beneficiaries of this development of Christian vocabulary.
 
In getting answers about what has changed it all depends on who you listen to. On this forum, Mormons claiming to be active members of the church, and also claiming to be knowledgeable, e.g., often claiming teaching experience, have at various times asserted ~
  • Heavenly Father is not an exalted man and that has never been Mormon Doctrine, it’s something that was misunderstood from some early meeting of the LDS church.
  • Humans cannot progress to Godhood, and it has never been Mormon Doctrine that they could.
These are just a couple of examples, but you can see the obvious difference between what you assert and what they have asserted. The differences are so striking it’s hard to believe that you and those who made the statements are members of the same faith.

You are actually one of the few Mormons, as another poster has noted, who has been willing to address issues in a straightforward way. Your answers aren’t snarky, which is refreshing, and you don’t run from difficult issues, you take them on. So while we may not agree with your beliefs, we can respect your views.
I am too old to run Melanie and way too slow to get away from anyone. You would catch me. Your grandmother would catch me. Your aged one-legged great uncle Horace would catch me.

You have hit upon one of the weaknesses in Mormoneering. We all want to answer every question. Sometimes I even get it right! The best way to hold our feet to the fire is ask us to provide sources. :imsorry:
 
I am too old to run Melanie and way too slow to get away from anyone. You would catch me. Your grandmother would catch me. Your aged one-legged great uncle Horace would catch me.
JL, I’m pretty sure you could catch my Grandmother since her mortal remains are presently located at Forest Lawn 😉 As a Grandmother myself, I can relate to the whole “slow” thing. Not sure who would catch whom. 😃
 
The concept of a triune God would have been unknown to Plato. I think what you are referring to are Platonic vocabulary that was adapted by the early church to describe the trinity and other Christian concepts, which were widely accepted by the church fathers long before Nicea. One of the difficulties the early church had was finding the vocabulary to express the concepts implicit in the truths revealed by Jesus and taught by the apostles. That is why as you read through the ECFs in chronological order, you see this development of ecclesial vocabulary that give voice to these New Testament concepts of God. Later groups, like the Protestants and the Mormons, are the beneficiaries of this development of Christian vocabulary.
You bring up an intersteing point Paul. Where does the triune concept of God come from? According to Ehrman, the first mention and the only one, is in the Latin Vulgate which you know was the translation done by Jerome in about 382 or so at the behest of Pope Damasus I. The passage, 1 John 7-8 says,* For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one*. Without it everythng else has to be inferred. Jerome used a Greek manuscript to translate from. A problem however arises because no one can find any Greek manuscript that has that same text. It seems al lthe Greek versions are absent the last part. They don’t contain the “And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one” Where did it come from? The corolary was never there and thus the only support for the first part apparanlty never existed. The supposition is that Jerome added it to re-inforce the doctrine the Church was espousing even though it did not exist. Without it the Trintarian view is weakened and not at all directly supported in the bible. One has to be creative to locate anything that supports that theological concept. My source is Misquoting Jesus by Ehrman page 81.

So where did it come from? Father Charles Curran, a Roman Catholic priest, said,
“*We [the Christians] went through the problem of appropriating the word in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries with the great trinitarian and Christalogical councils where we finally came to the conclusion of three persons in God and two natures in Jesus. Many people at the time said, ‘Well, you can’t say that because those words aren’t in the scriptures.’ That’s right, they aren’t in the scriptures, they are borrowed from Greek philosophy, but they are the on-going account of the believing community to understand, appropriate and live the word of God in its own circumstances.” * A Catholic preist said it. It was a construct for convenience sake. My sourse is: Charles Curran, Creative Fidelity: Keeping the Religion a Living Tradition, Sunstone Magazine, July 1987.
 
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