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“Brothers and sisters, we are eternal beings, without beginning and without end. We have always existed.1 We are the literal spirit children of divine, immortal, and omnipotent Heavenly Parents! We come from the heavenly courts of the Lord our God. We are of the royal house of Elohim, the Most High God. We walked with Him in our premortal life. We heard Him speak, witnessed His majesty, learned His ways.”
(“O How Great the Plan of Our God!”, President Uchtdorf,
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2016/10/o-how-great-the-plan-of-our-god?lang=eng “omnipotent Heavenly Parents!” stood out to me. I felt of the power that our Heavenly Mother shares unitedly with Heavenly Father.
Starting with the Essay on Heavenly Mother, I believe that there is an organized effort to put forward the concept of a divine couple. This is borne out by the increase in mention of Heavenly Parents in GC.
http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/faith/4549096-155/meet-the-heavenly-parents-mormon-leaders As a man, I honestly feel somewhat ambivalent about the development. I do not personally have a hunger for a female deity.
Heavenly Mother is an odd doctrine because she is not mentioned in any of our standard works. (The reference materials that all of our doctrine is supposed to come from) This puts us in a somewhat odd situation. Even in the quote you just mentioned our omnipotent Heavenly parents are introduced but then we turn immediately to the “courts of the Lord our God”, “the royal house of Elohim”, “walked with Him”, “heard Him speak”, “witnesses His majesty”, “learned His ways.”
Where does Heavenly Mother come into play? Does she have co-ownership of the courts and the royal house? Did we walk with her? Hear her speak? witness her majesty? or learn of her ways? Does she do anything?
It is an interesting development indeed.
I’m no scholar, but I just don’t see how we don’t end up going there. Isn’t it impossible not to, given how we’ve defined Heavenly Father? There is a father with a male body and children, but no mother? “The thought makes reason stare,” and all that. I know I’m just stating the obvious. I can’t say that I’ve always yearned for Heavenly Mother, but I do now.
My cynical side thinks this renewed emphasis on heavenly parents is part of the push to emphasize traditional marriage, which is partly in reaction to gay marriage being more widely accepted. My provocative side says it’s possible we don’t know much about Heavenly Mother because we actually have two Heavenly Daddies.
Seriously, though, as someone who approves of both nontraditional marriage and female deity, I’m not sure how to take this.
Reuben wrote:… My provocative side says it’s possible we don’t know much about Heavenly Mother because we actually have two Heavenly Daddies.
😆 Maybe it is because I very recently listened to Bill Reel’s MormonDiscussionPodcast I think this gets tangled up with with the Adam God doctrine and the top church leaders want to stay the hell away from that.
Idon’t want to go there. I’m not at all opposed to things like what Pres. Uchtdorf and others have said and that there does seem to be some new emphasis placed on the female divine. Whenever church leaders expand the tiny world view of the true believers I am happy. The truth is that I have just as much trouble connecting with the female divine as I do the male divine. It may have to do with my deist views of God or it may have to do with my own very dysfunctional family dynamics. It sure would be nice if God would manifest himself or herself far more than he or she does. The other issue I have is that I don’t believe the creation of spirits has anything to do with sex, I believe sex is something we only know and do physically on earth (so I suppose from a certain point of view all the afterlife would therefore be hell). I’m pretty sure there is no LDS doctrine relating to that last idea, there me be some LDS theology I am unaware of. Reuben wrote:My cynical side thinks this renewed emphasis on heavenly parents is part of the push to emphasize traditional marriage, which is partly in reaction to gay marriage being more widely accepted.
I was thinking this as well. It’s hard to bury heavenly mother when making a case against gay marriage.
I don’t mean to derail the thread but this is semi-related. Does Mormon doctrine define god as being omnipotent? I can imagine people offering up a decent argument in either direction.
nibbler wrote:I don’t mean to derail the thread but this is semi-related. Does Mormon doctrine define god as being omnipotent? I can imagine people offering up a decent argument in either direction.
I could imagine people here making an argument one way or the other, but my perception of the average orthodox member is that they believe God is indeed all powerful and can do anything. I don’t disbelieve that myself, although I do question it. There is a part of me that wonders of God is not actually omnipotent and that’s the reason he doesn’t do more than he does.
I would wager McConkie had an opinion on the subject, but I threw out his great opinion essays (AKA
Mormon Doctrine). There is however much of his opinion left in the Bible Dictionary and Topical Guide. From the BD: Quote:Although God created all things and is the ruler of the universe, being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent (through His Spirit), mankind has a special relationship to Him that differentiates man from all other created things: man is literally God’s offspring, made in His image, whereas all other things are but the work of His hands
I will note that it is my understanding that at least some LDS Bible Dictionary entries are modified from another source, with LDS theology (or the opinions of those who modified it) intertwined. The “omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent” wording does not seem to me to be how an LDS leader might normally phrase it. And while the entry on God does reference the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, there is no mention of a female God.
DarkJedi wrote:I could imagine people here making an argument one way or the other, but my perception of the average orthodox member is that they believe God is indeed all powerful and can do anything.
Maybe this is venturing into nuanced territory but I think there are points of orthodox doctrine that makes god subject to things, “The Law” for example, or even us provided we do what god says. Does a certain level of capriciousness come bundled with omnipotence? For example, why would an omnipotent god need to provide a savior to satisfy the demands of justice? Or perhaps god is the author of the laws to which god is also subject to.
That’s a different discussion.
DarkJedi wrote:The truth is that I have just as much trouble connecting with the female divine as I do the male divine.
I might, too, but I’d like to try in an atmosphere that included a divine feminine. What makes so little sense to some women is ascribing lifelike attributes to Father and then having Mother be a complete cipher.
Quote:The other issue I have is that I don’t believe the creation of spirits has anything to do with sex …
It takes a huge leap of faith anymore for me to even believe in an afterlife or resurrection, so I definitely don’t believe in actual sex to create spirits. But when our story is that some kind of replication, organization, or whatever, created us in their image, I don’t see how we can not flesh out the idea of a mother.
Ann wrote:It takes a huge leap of faith anymore for me to even believe in an afterlife or resurrection, so I definitely don’t believe in actual sex to create spirits. But when our story is that some kind of replication, organization, or whatever, created us in their image, I don’t see how we can not flesh out the idea of a mother.
I agree with you. I don’t know how the universe was created, either, but I believe God did it. I likewise believe he is the father of our spirits, and if there is a father there must be a mother. I just don’t ever feel much of a connection with the creators of our spirits. I could be totally wrong about sex in the afterlife, but it makes little sense to me.
nibbler wrote:DarkJedi wrote:I could imagine people here making an argument one way or the other, but my perception of the average orthodox member is that they believe God is indeed all powerful and can do anything.
Maybe this is venturing into nuanced territory but I think there are points of orthodox doctrine that makes god subject to things, “The Law” for example, or even us provided we do what god says. Does a certain level of capriciousness come bundled with omnipotence? For example, why would an omnipotent god need to provide a savior to satisfy the demands of justice? Or perhaps god is the author of the laws to which god is also subject to.
That’s a different discussion.
It is a different discussion, maybe worth starting a thread about. But I have wondered these things myself, especially in my more agnostic days. Then there’s the conundrum that God made the law but somehow has to obey the law, but then some miracles seem to defy the law. Maybe he only says he has to obey the law, sort of like the prophet says he could never lead us astray but the only way we know that is because he said so – and it may not actually be so. And frankly I’ve always wondered about the whole atonement thing myself – if God is omnipotent, couldn’t he just forgive whoever he wants for whatever reason? Why does there need to be a law? And where does Heavenly Mother fit in the law? (On the TV show Lucifer, she’s also been cast out of heaven.)
Ann wrote:I’m no scholar, but I just don’t see how we don’t end up going there. Isn’t it impossible not to, given how we’ve defined Heavenly Father? There is a father with a male body and children, but no mother? “The thought makes reason stare,” and all that. I know I’m just stating the obvious.
LookingHard wrote:Maybe it is because I very recently listened to Bill Reel’s MormonDiscussionPodcast I think this gets tangled up with with the Adam God doctrine and the top church leaders want to stay the hell away from that. I don’t want to go there.
I agree that heavenly parents is a logical conclusion given our theology. Having listened to the same podcast on this subject, I also agree that the Adam-God doctrine was also a natural outgrowth of our eternal marriage/eternal progression theology. The couplet “As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.” Is also a logical next step to this theology.Adam-God has been called a theory and specifically disavowed. The first part of the couplet about the origin of God has been downplayed and diminished. Are we trying to pick up one end of a theological stick without picking up the other? (although I believe that many/most would not really think deeply about these things)
DarkJedi wrote:I would wager McConkie had an opinion on the subject [of Omnipotence], but I threw out his great opinion essays (AKA Mormon Doctrine). There is however much of his opinion left in the Bible Dictionary and Topical Guide
My understanding is that there has been some tension between those that would emphasize the eternal progression aspect of God against those that would emphasize the perfection and “Omni” attributes of God that are common outside of Mormonism. I understand that Elder McConkie did use the Omni’s to describe God and was a large force towards pushing the pendulum in that direction.
I’m a bit cynical about the idea of our heavenly mother/mothers, so if we accept the idea of God having multiple wives, which one is my heavenly mother and why is she hanging out with this polygamist? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Vincent53 wrote:I’m a bit cynical about the idea of our heavenly mother/mothers, so if we accept the idea of God having multiple wives, which one is my heavenly mother and why is she hanging out with this polygamist?
Among the many things I am unsure of, one of them is that I am unsure Heavenly Father is a polygamist. If we’re backing off the “As man is God once was….” idea, I would err on the side of God not being a polygamist.
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