Women’s Salvation Dependent on the Man?

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

Old Timer wrote:

Co-dependent is the official doctrine.

I believe that this is difficult because we do not really seem to talk about it (for multiple reasons). Is heavenly marriage a marriage of co-equals? I think that we would like to say yes but I have trouble seeing how that could be the case for 3 principle reasons:

1st is Heavenly Mother. Is she co-equal with HF? What does she do?

2nd is Polygamy. Polygamy is prima facie unequal. My understanding of how this works in exaltation is that the husband receives power and glory based on his governing and the size of his governed. His wives are part of his governed and receive reflected glory from him. Therefore there is a reciprocal (co-dependent?) relationship but it is not co-equal. It is like the president deriving his power from the citizenship but a citizen not being co-equal with the president. We are told not to speculate weather or not polygamy is a requirement for exaltation and there have been church teachings going both ways on this point. However the theology of polygamy seems much more developed than our current “get married in the temple and somehow that makes you into a God/Goddess in the afterlife” mentality. If the polygamy theology is wrong we seem to be reluctant to say so or to come up with a compelling replacement theology.

We could fill the thread with lots of crazy quotes from leaders. Understandably, leaders don’t do that anymore, but not quoting them is not the same as disavowing/clarifying and setting a new course. So until they do, people are, imo, rightly suspicious that they just don’t want to.

Quote:

3rd is the temple ceremony. It is not co-equal and still has wording that indicates some of the governer/governed or presider/”presidee” relationship. I have written before that this is not just a Mormon phenomenon as the phrasing and concepts in question mirror pretty closely what Paul writes in Corinthians. However, the current LDS position of polygamy being divinely commanded and the temple ceremony being divinely revealed definitely add a unique Mormon twist to the whole thing.

But we have changed it in the past. I’m left with the sinking feeling again – maybe they don’t want to change it.

The more distance I get from this very hurtful issue, well…the less it hurts. If I didn’t have daughters I could put it in my rear-view mirror. But I’m stuck helping (to whatever extent I do at their ages) them navigate. And … I got nothin’. All the crazy quotes rattle around with no comment from anyone with power; the temple sits like a rock. Brian Hales recently did an interview where he doubled down on the connection between polygamy and sealing authority. (I.e., can’t disavow the former without canceling the latter. I couldn’t disagree more.)

I really don’t know what to think, or what to tell my girls.

[Anonymous]

Reuben wrote:

As an aside, here’s another weird topology I’d like to see some discourse on, just because I’m weird: suppose a man is born in the covenant, and his parents are sealed to him and his wife as children. (A cycle in the family tree! “I’m my own celestial grandpa!”) Can such a topology bestow whatever children gain from sealing to parents without it being part of an unbroken chain that goes back to Adam and Eve? Can this bestowal of whatever children gain be bootstrapped? Could this solve the problem of nonexistent genealogical records?

Also, if we can work this out, we have a real shot at a doctrine of celestial marriage that accounts for time travel.

Enquiring minds want to know.

So if I get your meaning…

Code:

for (i = 0; i < ancestry.length; i++) {geneology += ancestry[i]; i--;}

Geneology recursion. I like it. :clap:

In the recursion script you’ll end up with an eternal pedigree, BUT it still wouldn’t be linked to Adam. Your “ancestry array” would remain the same, but your sealings wouldn’t match it. You’d probably be better off doing the proxy work for “undefined”. Do you think God would count it? I could have the geneology of the entire human race printed out by noon tomorrow…

But in all seriousness, even as a TBM I never understood why parents need to be sealed to their children. It’s not a covenant like marriage… your parents are your parents, and your children are your children regardless of what happens. And each worthy child of God will be sealed to their spouse(s), and recieve their exaltation; so why would they need to be under the thumb of an ancestrial patriarch? What benifit would it provide, that I wouldn’t automatically recieve as a child of God?

[Anonymous]

Ann wrote:

But we have changed [the temple endowment] in the past. I’m left with the sinking feeling again – maybe they don’t want to change it.

Thread jack:

The last (major) change to the temple endowment was in 1990. I didn’t have a pulse on the culture of the church in 1990. I find myself wondering whether the prevailing church culture has become more literal, less literal, or has remained relatively the same in the last 27 years.

Was it easy for members in 1990 to accept the changes made to the endowment or did many members experience cognitive dissonance because a part of the ordinance had changed?

Do you think maintaining ordinance purity serves as a barrier of sorts to making another round of sweeping changes? Or do you believe that the top leaders are comfortable enough with continued revelation that maintaining ordinance purity wouldn’t come into play. It probably depends on the person, the change being considered, etc., etc. but I wonder whether the current environment of the church (regular Joe members) could handle sweeping changes made to the endowment and whether that factors into decisions made at the top.

Tangential details to my point:

I was a missionary right about the time the 1990 changes were made and one of our teaching points about the Great Apostasy was that other religions changed the ordinances so they needed to be restored to the proper methodology. Maintaining ordinance purity was a thing to the culture. Maybe people compartmentalize ordinances.

There have been more recent changes (2005 & 2008) but they were small enough to make me wonder whether the majority of people noticed.

Maybe the endowment is more pliable because:

1) It’s not canonized anywhere in scripture. Baptism and the sacrament have rules and specific language mentioned in scripture.

2) The endowment wasn’t codified by JS. It was sort of an oral tradition for 30 years before being scripted and probably 50+ years before it was “correlated.”

[Anonymous]

I never said “co-equal”. I said “co-dependent”. There is a difference, and it is important.

I feel a bit like Elder Stephenson in this thread: Said one thing, but the responses we’re about something else. 😆

[Anonymous]

Old Timer wrote:

I never said “co-equal”. I said “co-dependent”. There is a difference, and it is important.

I feel a bit like Elder Stephenson in this thread: Said one thing, but the responses were about something else. 😆

I agree! I’m saying that as I watch the ones close to me process this in a kind of slo-mo, they’re realizing that all their lives in the church, the distinction has been blurred. And so many of us didn’t care too much. We were okay with it because men and women were co-…something, and that sounded acceptable.

[Anonymous]

nibbler wrote:

Ann wrote:

But we have changed [the temple endowment] in the past. I’m left with the sinking feeling again – maybe they don’t want to change it.

Thread jack:

The last (major) change to the temple endowment was in 1990. I didn’t have a pulse on the culture of the church in 1990. I find myself wondering whether the prevailing church culture has become more literal, less literal, or has remained relatively the same in the last 27 years.

Was it easy for members in 1990 to accept the changes made to the endowment or did many members experience cognitive dissonance because a part of the ordinance had changed?

Do you think maintaining ordinance purity serves as a barrier of sorts to making another round of sweeping changes? Or do you believe that the top leaders are comfortable enough with continued revelation that maintaining ordinance purity wouldn’t come into play. It probably depends on the person, the change being considered, etc., etc. but I wonder whether the current environment of the church (regular Joe members) could handle sweeping changes made to the endowment and whether that factors into decisions made at the top.

Tangential details to my point:

I was a missionary right about the time the 1990 changes were made and one of our teaching points about the Great Apostasy was that other religions changed the ordinances so they needed to be restored to the proper methodology. Maintaining ordinance purity was a thing to the culture. Maybe people compartmentalize ordinances.

There have been more recent changes (2005 & 2008) but they were small enough to make me wonder whether the majority of people noticed.

Maybe the endowment is more pliable because:

1) It’s not canonized anywhere in scripture. Baptism and the sacrament have rules and specific language mentioned in scripture.

2) The endowment wasn’t codified by JS. It was sort of an oral tradition for 30 years before being scripted and probably 50+ years before it was “correlated.”

Re. 1990 changes, I admit I didn’t think much one way or the other. I just found the penalties tedious in the extreme and were happy they were gone.

I’m hoping the endowment is pliable enough to survive what would initially seem like the biggest change yet.

[Anonymous]

I taught the lesson in HPG last Sunday, using the assigned talk: Elder Oaks’ “The Keys and Authority of the Priesthood” from April 2014 – the one where he said that women exercise what I call direct and indirect priesthood power and authority, especially those who have been endowed. The Temple President is part of the group, and I was glad he was there.

We read portions of the talk and discussed the meanings of power, authority, and keys – and we talked about how endowed women possess direct Priesthood power and authority as a result of the endowment. The obvious example was mentioned (women performing ordinances in the temple), but I pointed out that the women who do so are called and set apart as temple workers, with “temple keys” having been activated to allow them to perform ordinances as part of that calling. I pointed to two other aspects of our temple theology and practices:

1) Women leave the temple clothed in the garment of the Holy Priesthood. It is hard to argue they don’t have Priesthood authority and power when they wear the exact same tokens of that Priesthood as the men do.

2) I mentioned the part in the endowment where it says the participants are prepared to officiate in the ordinances of both Priesthood classifications. I said that no man or woman was authorized to perform any particular ordinance simply because they were endowed in the temple, but the wording makes it clear that all men AND women are prepared by the endowment to do so.

Near the end, I used the example of OD2 and said I wouldn’t object or be surprised at all by an announcement of another revelation that ended the current ban on women being ordained to Priesthood offices – not that I expected it, but that it wouldn’t surprise me, given the way Elder Oaks addressed the reason why it hasn’t happened yet.

I ended by saying that my greatest hope was that no man in the Church would tell any endowed or set-apart woman in the Church that she didn’t have Priesthood authority, either directly as a result of her endowment or through her calling – that, right now, what we can do as a result of how the keys have been used differs somewhat, particularly in the performance of ordinances outside the temple and receiving administrative keys, but that, in perhaps all other cases, the Priesthood power and authority is the same.

Obviously, I had to word things very carefully, precisely, and accurately, but it went well – and the Temple President (a wonderful man) was able to give some excellent supporting commentary at a couple of key points.

[Anonymous]

Old Timer wrote:

I taught the lesson in HPG last Sunday, using the assigned talk: Elder Oaks’ “The Keys and Authority of the Priesthood” from April 2014 – the one where he said that women exercise what I call direct and indirect priesthood power and authority, especially those who have been endowed. The Temple President is part of the group, and I was glad he was there.

We read portions of the talk and discussed the meanings of power, authority, and keys – and we talked about how endowed women possess direct Priesthood power and authority as a result of the endowment. The obvious example was mentioned (women performing ordinances in the temple), but I pointed out that the women who do so are called and set apart as temple workers, with “temple keys” having been activated to allow them to perform ordinances as part of that calling. I pointed to two other aspects of our temple theology and practices:

1) Women leave the temple clothed in the garment of the Holy Priesthood. It is hard to argue they don’t have Priesthood authority and power when they wear the exact same tokens of that Priesthood as the men do.

2) I mentioned the part in the endowment where it says the participants are prepared to officiate in the ordinances of both Priesthood classifications. I said that no man or woman was authorized to perform any particular ordinance simply because they were endowed in the temple, but the wording makes it clear that all men AND women are prepared by the endowment to do so.

Near the end, I used the example of OD2 and said I wouldn’t object or be surprised at all by an announcement of another revelation that ended the current ban on women being ordained to Priesthood offices – not that I expected it, but that it wouldn’t surprise me, given the way Elder Oaks addressed the reason why it hasn’t happened yet.

I ended by saying that my greatest hope was that no man in the Church would tell any endowed or set-apart woman in the Church that she didn’t have Priesthood authority, either directly as a result of her endowment or through her calling – that, right now, what we can do as a result of how the keys have been used differs somewhat, particularly in the performance of ordinances outside the temple and receiving administrative keys, but that, in perhaps all other cases, the Priesthood power and authority is the same.

Obviously, I had to word things very carefully, precisely, and accurately, but it went well – and the Temple President (a wonderful man) was able to give some excellent supporting commentary at a couple of key points.

Very cool that this discussion was had. :thumbup:

But I honestly don’t understand how priesthood and the female temple experience relate to each other. Say women are ordained to priesthood offices. In the temple would she still be a priestess to her husband? And he, alone, a priest to God? Hearkening unchanged? It remains okay for them to be co-dependent, not co-equal? Aside from not liking their style, this is the main reason I wanted nothing to do with Ordain Women. I say they have the cart before the horse. I always thought, let’s get that horse going and see where it takes us. It might not be to female ordination.

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