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Never understood the big deal here, even if he was supposedly “once a man”. The idea of HF as a universal presence makes more sense to me, than a single person, human sized trying to direct things. I don’t even know how that would work. I’ve never understood why this doctrine is so emphasised. Because it’s shocking! 😆 Definitely a way of getting attention in a crowded Christian marketplace of ideas. It’s almost like yelling fire in a religious theater.
on a more serious note: it has some interesting theological implications. Mormonism drags God down from the mysterious and untouchable Platonic conceptual ideals, and projects humans up into the heavens as gods. We close the gap dramatically, compared to the rest of Christendom.
Not sure… it kind of wrecks the idea of omnipotence for me. It makes me think everything’s delegaged. (No offense HF, if my thinking is wrong!) Quote:it has some interesting theological implications. Mormonism drags God down from the mysterious and untouchable Platonic conceptual ideals, and projects humans up into the heavens as gods. We close the gap dramatically, compared to the rest of Christendom.
I’m keen on the promotion part, not the demotion.
I think the concept of condescension (voluntarily “dragging one’s self down” in order to lift others up) is a powerful concept. “Factual / Actual” or not when it comes to God (Father and/or Son), I really like the power of the concept. The article by Stephen Webb about an outsider’s appreciation of the Book of Mormon and Mormon theology is relevant here. The link can be found in the following post here:
We delved into this a little bit in the Atonement panel discussion on MormonMatters. Mormons ultimately preach a limited God. It’s one of our main “heresies.” Sure, we also sort of think of God in the traditional, creedal Christian(TM) threesome of Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent. But in the end, our conception of Heavenly Father is as a supreme being who chooses to limit himself by rules — the laws of nature, and more particularly the absolute law of free agency. He will not take away choice. While most of the rest of Christendom posits a God who is mysterious, unknowable and outside the confines of our natural universe; Mormons have the audacity to claim God is like us, and lives somewhere in our same sphere of reality. We are of the same substance, and are co-eternal with God the creator.
It’s a different view. Why do we have to do this? *shrug* I’m not convinced anymore we
haveto only see God one way or another. If you like to think of God as a universal presence of love, or like The Force in the Star Wars movies, I can dig that too. IMO, nobody really knows anyway. So use ways to think of God that help you be a better person, or help you spiritually to have God in your life. It’s more important to know God than to know about God. (taken from another thread)
Brian Johnston wrote:Mormonism drags God down from the mysterious and untouchable Platonic conceptual ideals, and projects humans up into the heavens as gods. We close the gap dramatically, compared to the rest of Christendom.
But creation
ismysterious. I guess that, at some level, making god more like the guy next door helps some people feel like it’s all somehow that much more easily understandable, but for me it just leaves that much bigger of a gap somewhere else. Please excuse my English. I have nothing on which to connect right now except an iPhone, and that doesn’t make it easy to post. The idea that god the father is precisely one of us is completely heresy to mainstream christians. It cannot be the case, because in Trinitarian theology, god cannot be material–he must represent the platonic ideal.
In my impression, the indictment against current religion by the first vision is critical: “they teach for commandment the philosophies of men”. Then in the temple: satan and his minister(s) (there will be many) preaching the philospophies of men mingled with scripture. What are these philosophies other than the neo-platonic incursion into Christianity due to Origen and Augustine? All the omni-whatever come from this, and is impossible to defend, given the theodicy. God is always and forever ideal and perfect: the only ‘reality’ — we are entirely ‘the other’ — a sinful creature, shadow of the ideal reality. The god of the first vision account is literally a physical man of holiness–one of us– being in the calling of God the Father–this completely shatters the ideal god and establishes a god existentially and ontologically human.
Paradoxically, this physicality was revealed to JS in a vision, which by D&C 8 is in the mind and heart of JS. I am left with a conclusion that the physicality could have been a symbol of a deeper truth (existential ontology of “god as us”) and the actual physical corporality of an independent “being” of god the father is not necessary once the truth is understood. I recognize, however, that this point is speculative heresy to almost all LDS.
doug wrote:But creation
ismysterious. I guess that, at some level, making god more like the guy next door helps some people feel like it’s all somehow that much more easily understandable, but for me it just leaves that much bigger of a gap somewhere else. Please excuse my English. I understand what you are saying. I am not very attached anymore to God having to specifically be one thing or another. I think different ways of thinking about the nature of God have different beneficial values.
I personally like the awe & mystery style God the Catholics portray in their services and in their beautiful art and architecture. I also like thinking about God as an organizing force or consciousness that permeates the universe. Then again, God as an exalted human is also appealing in a lot of ways. It gives my life a more grand sense of purpose: aka the hero’s journey.
wayfarer wrote:I have nothing on which to connect right now except an iPhone, and that doesn’t make it easy to post.
The idea that god the father is precisely one of us is completely heresy to mainstream christians. It cannot be the case, because in Trinitarian theology, god cannot be material–he must represent the platonic ideal.
In my impression, the indictment against current religion by the first vision is critical: “they teach for commandment the philosophies of men”. Then in the temple: satan and his minister(s) (there will be many) preaching the philospophies of men mingled with scripture. What are these philosophies other than the neo-platonic incursion into Christianity due to Origen and Augustine? All the omni-whatever come from this, and is impossible to defend, given the theodicy. God is always and forever ideal and perfect: the only ‘reality’ — we are entirely ‘the other’ — a sinful creature, shadow of the ideal reality. The god of the first vision account is literally a physical man of holiness–one of us– being in the calling of God the Father–this completely shatters the ideal god and establishes a god existentially and ontologically human.
Paradoxically, this physicality was revealed to JS in a vision, which by D&C 8 is in the mind and heart of JS. I am left with a conclusion that the physicality could have been a symbol of a deeper truth (existential ontology of “god as us”) and the actual physical corporality of an independent “being” of god the father is not necessary once the truth is understood. I recognize, however, that this point is speculative heresy to almost all LDS.
You did that on an iphone? My hat is off to you.
I know what I am about to write here will mix-up or combine the LDS God/Jesus narrative. I am not confused on them – I sometimes see them (God/Jesus) as interchangeable as the scriptures imply. Anyway – Heavenly Father having a body for me gives me a traveling companion. Someone who fell down off his bike and got road rash. It’s a Dad who holds my hand when things get tough and says, “I know, you’ll make it, I love you.” Whatever realm he lived or lives in, he has lived something closer to mine and when I need him most I feel more able to access the Father who has my same comprehension.
And yes, we give the credit to the Savior also, but I love having as many coaches, cheerleaders, and friends in my corner as I can get. So I embrace a bodied Heavenly Family.
doug wrote:You did that on an iphone? My hat is off to you.
Yeah, well, it’s a function of being a wayfarer — in a different city every night for the next several weeks. now in a european hotel, tiny room, but at least they have internet…mom3 wrote:… So I embrace a bodied Heavenly Family.
Thanks for sharing that, really. Though I prefer a more mystical view, my wife thinks that’s crazy, or more accurately, she finds it comfortless. Again I am reminded that our personalities, whatever they may consist of, have a large influence on not only how we see god, but on every aspect of our lives.
I think of it much like I as a small child I thought of my parents, who created miracles all day long of which I had no comprehension: travel in cars, trains, planes; through me up into the air and catch me, knows what to do when I skin my knee, gives me pills that makes me well, somehow keeps my stomach full and my body comfortably warm. And that’s long before I know or can comprehend that he is a rocket scientist or brain surgeon and what that means. As an adult with some exposure to the sciences, I am in awe of the beauty and complexity of God’s creation from the lowly atom and single cell organism to the solar system and the entire “limitless” universe, realizing that by Him, they are all counted. Quote:Isaiah 59:8-9
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Philosophically, it is reasonable to me that God would need to be a physical being to understand, appreciate and work with the physical realm. I don’t think he can effect matter just by crude mechanical techniques (or even sophistical astrophysics . I’m sure he operates on physical and other realities by laws much, much higher than that. Maybe by love??!
But the Platonic notion of a god that is everywhere, but nowhere, omni-everything doesn’t sound plausible or reasonable to me. But if He has a body like mine and wants me as his child to grow up like him, then this thing we call mortality with families, and challenges, and hopes and dreams, suddenly starts to make some sense. But if as most Christians teach, God is everything that we are not, and we are everything that he is not, then what use is mortality? How could it possibly prepare us for something that is so much unlike us?
doug wrote:mom3 wrote:… So I embrace a bodied Heavenly Family.
Thanks for sharing that, really. Though
I prefer a more mystical view,Some days I do to.
Quote:While most of the rest of Christendom posits a God who is mysterious, unknowable and outside the confines of our natural universe; Mormons have the audacity to claim God is like us, and lives somewhere in our same sphere of reality. We are of the same substance, and are co-eternal with God the creator.
You see, my problem is that although this makes God sympathetic (empathetic?), it makes him weak. And I don’t like that.
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