2 New Essays – Woman and Priesthood & Heavenly Mother

Nate, commenter #4 on the Wheat & Tares post (“Will the Real Heavenly Mother Please Stand Up?”) says:

http://www.wheatandtares.org/19412/will-the-real-heavenly-mother-please-stand-up/

The problem of Heavenly Mother arises from the anthropomorphic nature of the LDS God. A non-physical, infinite God can by definition include all traits we might personify as feminine: wisdom, mercy, etc. Whether we call this traditional God a He or She is irrelevant, as irrelevant as whether my computer is a he or a she. We can imagine dimensions of this God as a wrathful Jehovah in a relationship with a merciful Sophia, but these are understood as metaphors and parables used to try to understand God in His fullness.

The problem with the LDS conception is that we try to conflate the traditional idea of God as an infinite, all-encompassing being, who at the same time is a literal man with a beard. And Mormons also believe that man is not complete without a woman, not just physically, but complementarily. We see men and women as complimentary beings who need each other to create a proper balance.

The problem is that our male Mormon God doesn’t seem to need Heavenly Mother. He seems complete without Her, being as feminine in His tender mercies as He is masculine in His justice.

This concept necessarily marginalizes women in LDS theology. What is their eternal role if they are seen as superfluous in the Godhood?

There are two ways forward: either deemphasize the anthropomorphic nature of God, allowing the divine feminine to have a more natural place within His completeness, or else flesh out the nature of an anthropomorphic Heavenly Mother in order to counterbalance the overly male nature of the LDS God.

Just food for thought. This is a topic where I have a pretty easy time seeing everyone’s point of view.

Church is true: Sorry but I never saw your note before Ray’s moderation. So I’m just catching up.

I don’t know what to make of your questions doctrinally, but they are implications of believing in Heavenly Mother. I don’t necessarily want the church to clarify them simply because I don’t think our all-male leadership has ever been curious enough to ask about her. Having an all-male deity system works just fine for men. I’m not convinced I want men to clarify her.

Full scale adoption of King Follet doctrine? Now we’re back to the insanity of everyone gets their own world and becomes their own Heavenly Father when they die. Not bloody likely. We’re going in the opposite direction.

Personally, I like the King Follet doctrine. It also aligns nicely with the idea of becoming a Bodhisattva. To become truly enlightened, you must give your life for others. I don’t buy for a second that women are somehow exempt from the same rigors men must face or are less agents than men are. I do believe that the most Mormon concept we have, whether we openly own it or not, is that our purpose is to evolve into Gods.

No to full scale King Follet, but Mother in Heaven is a distinct, separate entity. How does that work? Does Jesus have a wife now? Does the Holy Ghost have a wife? Where is grandpa and grandma god? This puts us in our own crazy style polytheism.

Turtles all the way down, as they say. But once again you are framing women as something so completely different from men that they are not agents unto themselves, fully responsible people. They are just an appendage to a man in your examples. Why isn’t God the Mother a full God in her own right? Would God not marry someone who was His equal? Are we hybrids born of a God/lesser being? Can’t women be saviors? Can’t women achieve exaltation?

Maybe we nix all that and nix our view of anthropomorphic God all at the same time and say Heavenly Mother is just an aspect of God?

The history of the Hebrew Gods suggests just this, that the female gods were erased and their characteristics were added to the male deities by the monotheists. I’m inclined to think that they were erasing the female gods for political reasons and to increase their power, since that’s what happened.

I wrote this piece quite a while back: http://www.wheatandtares.org/10529/the-plan-of-asherah/

Thanks for the link to your article. It’s a good read. I’m not a big King Follet fan. I’m also a not fan of polytheism. If would probably favor of dropping anthropomorphic God to preserve monotheism, if push came to shove on the Heavenly Mother doctrine. My view on theology I accept is: 1. God exists. 2. He/She loves us. 3. There’s an afterlife. Nothing more specific than that. And I have to exert all the faith/hope I can possibly muster to get that far. I think whenever Mormonism (or any other religion for that matter) gets more specific than that on the characteristics of God, we shoot ourselves in the foot. My views on this subject have nothing to do with sexism or desire for male god or fear of female god. But we’re all biased and never fully understand our own motivations.

Nate, commenter #4 on the Wheat & Tares post (“Will the Real Heavenly Mother Please Stand Up?”) says:

http://www.wheatandtares.org/19412/will-the-real-heavenly-mother-please-stand-up/

The problem of Heavenly Mother arises from the anthropomorphic nature of the LDS God. A non-physical, infinite God can by definition include all traits we might personify as feminine: wisdom, mercy, etc. Whether we call this traditional God a He or She is irrelevant, as irrelevant as whether my computer is a he or a she. We can imagine dimensions of this God as a wrathful Jehovah in a relationship with a merciful Sophia, but these are understood as metaphors and parables used to try to understand God in His fullness.

The problem with the LDS conception is that we try to conflate the traditional idea of God as an infinite, all-encompassing being, who at the same time is a literal man with a beard. And Mormons also believe that man is not complete without a woman, not just physically, but complementarily. We see men and women as complimentary beings who need each other to create a proper balance.

The problem is that our male Mormon God doesn’t seem to need Heavenly Mother. He seems complete without Her, being as feminine in His tender mercies as He is masculine in His justice.

This concept necessarily marginalizes women in LDS theology. What is their eternal role if they are seen as superfluous in the Godhood?

There are two ways forward: either deemphasize the anthropomorphic nature of God, allowing the divine feminine to have a more natural place within His completeness, or else flesh out the nature of an anthropomorphic Heavenly Mother in order to counterbalance the overly male nature of the LDS God.

Just food for thought. This is a topic where I have a pretty easy time seeing everyone’s point of view.

I like the wording of this comment. It speaks my own feelings. If there is a HM, is she co-equal with HF? Does she co-parent and co-preside? Does she share God’s authority and priesthood? If the answer to any of these questions is yes then Why, Oh Why is she so absent from our scriptures and general worship experience. God “seems complete without Her”. If God is not complete without HM and She brings something to the table that God does not already have in fullness then what is it? What does She do? I agree with the suggestions put forth above.

do you feel we are moving more towards Heavenly Parents, instead of Heavenly Father?

I was just thinking about this the other day. You know what would really make me feel this? I mean really. A woman staffing the temple ordinance worker position that says “Let him enter.”

In my mind we have just as much reason to believe in HM as we do to believe that Jesus was married. Because nothing official definitively states that this is not the case and because Mormon doctrine requires that men be married in order to be exalted.

If we have a doctrine of HM then we need to explain why she does not appear in our scriptures … and we end up with kooky explanations like “God wanted to protect her from her mean spirited children.”

At this point our belief in HM seems to be much less firm as doctrine than the Priesthood Ban was in its day. The essay actually serves to legitimize HM as doctrine that was somewhat speculative and a “mystery” before.

I believe that our teaching of heavenly parents has very little to do with heavenly mother (as a companion to HF). HF seems perfectly capable of running the universe and carrying out His plan on His own. I believe the teaching of heavenly parents has much more to do with our doctrine of eternal marriage and progression/exaltation. Mormon men can look forward to Godhood and have conceptual role models to show what that might look like. Mormon women can also become “queens, priestesses, and Goddesses.” In the early days of the church (particularly with polygamy) being an exalted woman looked much more like being a heavenly subject than being an equal partner. The size of the posterity that the man was sealed to would increase his “kingdom”. A heavenly wife would add glory to the husband and the more wives the more glory for the husband (this glory could be increased exponentially as all these wives would have children).

Now we have much more egalitarian marriages and we imagine God’s family in our own image. How else would all the women of the church have anything to aspire to?

I still feel that HM is hiding in plain sight. She seems to be suppressed by an all-male leadership who don’t want us to be seen as pagan or anything but patriarchal. Perhaps it would hurt missionary work, or it might help it. http://www.wheatandtares.org/10529/the-plan-of-asherah/

It’s interesting to me that revelation might be in no small part calculation, and maybe always has been?