- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
I am curious if anyone know what the “laws, rites, and ordinances” are that pertain to eternal marriage for people who get married in the temple. It has been many years since I did sealings, and I’m not sure I ever internalized the meaning of these laws, rites and ordinances that I believe are mentioned in the actual sealing. I know that I had to be physically faithful to my wife, but beyond that, not sure. Comments?
The law of Sarah? The law of adoption?
The law of tithing?
The covenants, signs, and tokens of the endowment? (including the law of Chastity)
The prayer circle?
The sealing ceremony?
The second endowment?
Some combination of the above?
It would be easier to remember what they are if any ceremony ever explained what they are, SD. So there’s your problem. For reference:
http://www.ldsendowment.org/sealing.html I got the actual sealing verbiage from the site above so I knew what went on in the sealing room. I didn’t know if it is kosher to post it here though. But it’s not clear exactly what the bride and groom are agreeing to from even the website. It just gives the officiator’s pronouncement. I don’t even know what it is called — it’s not a prayer — more like a script, pronouncement, covenant and pledge. But the pledge/covenant refers to another covenant whose terms and conditions aren’t clear.
Maybe it’s in D&C 132? Actually, this article explains it. https://www.lds.org/ensign/2015/12/the-new-and-everlasting-covenant?lang=eng&_r=1 The marriage covenant includes taking someone as your wife or hubby, while living all of the other covenants associated with the gospel — baptism, endowment, sacrament, etcetera. So, it’s nothing new — you are just keeping the law of chastity with your wife while again, agreeing to live all the other covenants you already made. I assume it means the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood for men as well.
Here is a summary from the article of the broad categories into which the commandments fall:
Quote:
The terms of the covenants we as Latter-day Saints agree to live can be grouped into four categories: (1) to take upon us the name of the Savior, to remember Him always, and to follow His example; (2) to keep all His commandments; (3) to willingly serve God’s children as part of His work of salvation, even at personal sacrifice; and (4) to consecrate ourselves and our means to the Lord’s work.This is one covenant which seems to subsume all the others. It’s like they maxed out all your commitment on other covenants so they absorb them into the marriage covenant. The only thing the sealing seems to do on top of past commitments is make the person your lawful spouse now and into the eternities.
Answered my own question unless I’m missing something.
Presumably some anti-polygamy message is implied. SilentDawning wrote:
Answered my own question unless I’m missing something.
You’re missing that “rites” is properly understood as “sexytimes.”
One take, they’re ten cent words to give things an air of mysticism and to make it sound more important. There’s another approach. The loose definitions allow you to come up with your own meanings, which I see as a positive thing.
SilentDawning wrote:
Answered my own question unless I’m missing something.
I actually do not believe this to be the case. The article you are referencing seems to be a case of “retroactive continuity”. Because we no longer believe in polygamy we take the new and everlasting covenant to apply to the fullness of the gospel. This is not how it was used historically by the people that received it near the time that it was written. It was understood as polygamy. It was understood that there were different levels of exaltation and the larger one’s family kingdom the greater the exaltation.
It feels kinda like we built a city over ancient Aztec structures and we portray ourselves as a continuation of the heritage and divine authority of those Aztec rulers. Eventually there are some old writings that make reference to sacrifice. The mayor of our city interprets that to mean self-sacrifice. As the ancient document continues to be translated it later gives explicit descriptions of human sacrifice. The mayor now says that the term sacrifice had a double meaning. In ancient days it was understood mostly as human sacrifice that was being demanded by the gods. Now we see that our modern notions of altruism and self-sacrifice for the good of the community is also a valid reading of the text and that it brings about the same promised blessings as the more gruesome sacrifices did in former days.
We are not the same church that as the church from the JS and BY periods.
Roy wrote:
SilentDawning wrote:
Answered my own question unless I’m missing something.
I actually do not believe this to be the case.
I’m confused — did I answer my own question right by saying that according to modern interpretation, the new and everlasting covenant is a summation of all previous covenants?
I know I missed the part about it being “retroactive continuity”, but did I get the current meaning correct?
[Ironic that a rehash of old covenants would be called the “
[b][u]new[/u] [/b] and everlasting covenant”. Nothing new about it].What nibbler said. SilentDawning wrote:
I’m confused — did I answer my own question right by saying that according to modern interpretation, the new and everlasting covenant is a summation of all previous covenants?I know I missed the part about it being “retroactive continuity”, but did I get the current meaning correct?
Yes, You have the modern interpretation correct.
We have just changed the meanings of these words to fit current practice.
Similarly, the bible lists evangelists as one of the offices in the church. We LDS have defined evangelist as… patriarch because that is what JS said. The etymology for the word “evangelist” makes it a terrible fit for patriarch. We changed the meaning of a word that is found in the scriptures because we want the scriptures to support our current practices.
Sorry for being cranky about it. Honestly that is what early Christians did with the OT. I guess it is human nature.
Roy wrote:
SilentDawning wrote:
I’m confused — did I answer my own question right by saying that according to modern interpretation, the new and everlasting covenant is a summation of all previous covenants?I know I missed the part about it being “retroactive continuity”, but did I get the current meaning correct?
Yes, You have the modern interpretation correct.
We have just changed the meanings of these words to fit current practice.
Similarly, the bible lists evangelists as one of the offices in the church. We LDS have defined evangelist as… patriarch because that is what JS said. The etymology for the word “evangelist” makes it a terrible fit for patriarch. We changed the meaning of a word that is found in the scriptures because we want the scriptures to support our current practices.
Sorry for being cranky about it. Honestly that is what early Christians did with the OT. I guess it is human nature.
No crankiness was implied — but I have a question — where did you find the term “retroactive continuity” (which for me, means “reinterpreting the past”). Sounds like it came from a scholarly source and I’m interested — as it doesn’t seem like an LDS source.
SilentDawning wrote:
No crankiness was implied — but I have a question — where did you find the term “retroactive continuity” (which for me, means “reinterpreting the past”). Sounds like it came from a scholarly source and I’m interested — as it doesn’t seem like an LDS source.
I got the term from Hawkgrrrl.
https://bycommonconsent.com/2011/12/10/restoration/ The term comes from comic books and science fiction narratives. Suppose you want to make Thor the superhero into a woman. You can do that in a number of ways. You can have him go through an incident that makes him a woman (say that his body was dying and he was reborn as a woman – reincarnation). You can have him be a woman in an alternate dimension/universe (bizaro world?). Finally, you can make him into a woman and pretend that he had always been a woman. That is retroactive continuity. You make a change and then apply that change to the past as though that was the way it had always been.
We do this a lot in the church because we like to pretend that all the people in the scriptures – Jesus, Jonah, Jeremiah, and Jehoshaphat – were all Mormons that knew and taught very Mormon doctrines (until the evil and careless scribes deleted the “plain and precious truths. Do not worry though we added them back in). Classic retroactive continuity.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.