LDS High-ranking Mormon leader excommunicated

[BigDaddy4]

Why would God go through shuffling who he is around to make it confusing. The way Christianity understands the Godhead is incomprehensible. Why would God make himself incomprehensible? We really do not understand eternity. Why the mystery? Christian understanding of the Godhead just doesn't work.

God is incomprehensible for those to whom He has not revealed Himself to.

Proverbs 2:6
For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

 

[withwonderingawe]

What does the Apostle's Creed have to do with Mormonism? Your religion does not confess it.

Just making the point that the creeds grew in size and became more and more Hellenistic as they went along. Over a thousand years they went from 'we believe in God the Father, his Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost' to 'you can't be saved unless you believe God is an immaterial substance and without body parts and passions'. It's call getting it all wrong!

 

[Jane_Doe]

God is incomprehensible for those to whom He has not revealed Himself to.

Proverbs 2:6
For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

"The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible."
--The Athanasian Creed.

 

[withwonderingawe]

"The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible."
--The Athanasian Creed.

When I read that the first time I knew it was not of God!

"5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

 

[dzheremi]

"The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible."
--The Athanasian Creed.

The Athanasian Creed ought to more accurately be called the Pseudo-Athanasian Creed, as it did not appear in a time or place when it would have been possible for the real St. Athanasius to have written it.

 

[BigDaddy4]

"The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible."
--The Athanasian Creed.

I use Scripture, and you use a creed your religion calls an abomination? That's funny.

 

[Jane_Doe]

I use Scripture, and you use a creed your religion calls an abomination? That's funny.

The creed is your theology, not mine. Your creed, your theology, calls God "incomprehensible".

The Bible says "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not" and you said "God is incomprehensible for those to whom He has not revealed Himself to."

By your own logic, the Creed writers did not know God and were in darkness. Thank you for that great reminder.

 

[Peter1000]

And not have offices that are not even there in the New Testament church.

Does your particular denomination have any of the offices mentioned in the bible?

I can explain why we have more offices than in the first century church. Can you explain why you have none of the offices that the first century church had?

 

[BigDaddy4]

The creed is your theology, not mine. Your creed, your theology, calls God "incomprehensible".

The Bible says "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not" and you said "God is incomprehensible for those to whom He has not revealed Himself to."

By your own logic, the Creed writers did not know God and were in darkness. Thank you for that great reminder.

I don't recall ever saying it was "my" creed. You continue to show your misunderstandings on spiritual things.

 

[Jane_Doe]

I don't recall ever saying it was "my" creed. You continue to show your misunderstandings on spiritual things.

Do you reject the Athanasian Creed? Do you think these Church Fathers were in apostasy?
I do.

 

[dzheremi]

Just making the point that the creeds grew in size and became more and more Hellenistic as they went along.

"More Hellenistic"...? Oh, you mean like the New Testament itself, which was written in Greek in the first place? (Unless you're an Aramaic supremacist like Lamsa, et al., who are not taken seriously by scholars for a reason.)

Funny how you suddenly have such a problem with Hellenism when the apostles certainly did not when they were quoting directly from the LXX in the NT itself.

Christianity itself was born into a Hellenized world, and a Syrian world, and a Latin world, and a Coptic world, and a Berber North African world, and so on. Deal with it. All of these agree with each other on the foundational realities of Christianity, so any attempt to appeal to "Hellenism" as though this has corrupted Christianity will fall flat when you look at the breadth of Christianity and see that so many of its earliest defenders and preachers were at best incompletely Hellenized, and yet they still completely agree that God is three in one and one in three, one in essence.

Over a thousand years they went from 'we believe in God the Father, his Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost' to 'you can't be saved unless you believe God is an immaterial substance and without body parts and passions'. It's call getting it all wrong!

It's called your baseless assumptions and assertions that are directly contradicted by 2,000 unbroken years of Christian history and the witness therein found throughout the entire world.

You appear to be making the same mistake that many ahistorical Christianity-haters make, supposing that the councils or the creeds produced therein "invented" the beliefs they set down to permanence (in this case by moving them away from what was accepted earlier...or so the claim goes). This is a bit like claiming that HH St. Athanasius the Apostolic "invented" the Bible by giving us all the NT canon (after all, before him there were other canons around, but not one agreed upon canon that could be found everywhere). I know you don't believe that (or your religion doesn't actually behave as though it believes that, since that canon is accepted implicitly by the LDS by virtue of your reliance on the KJV Bible which uses it), so why do you argue as though it must be the case with regard to the belief of the Church?

And besides, there are witnesses from before the conciliar era that show what the faith of the ante-Nicene Church consisted of, and that's my faith, and every Trinitarian Christian's faith, not Mormonism. Here are three short examples, both for brevity's sake and because I don't actually own the Ante-Nicene Fathers collection in print (it's thousands of pages spread across something like 10 or 12 volumes, and quite expensive). so finding the relevant passages to quote from every source can be a bit daunting because of the variety of what is available.

You will note how these three are all from well before the conciliar era (pre-325 AD), and yet they talk about substance and Christ's oneness with the Father just as Nicene Christians do. There is simply nothing to the allegation that the theology of Nicaea is not in line with the ante-Nicene Church, and no amount of baseless presupposing of an invented 'apostasy' will make what the fathers of any age have written be in line with Mormonism, as opposed to Christianity.

The plant that springs from the root is something distinct from that whence it grows up; and yet it is of one nature with it. And the river which flows from the fountain is something distinct from the fountain. For we cannot call either the river a fountain, or the fountain a river. Nevertheless we allow that they are both one according to nature, and also one in substance; and we admit that the fountain may be conceived of as father, and that the river is what is begotten of the fountain.

-- HH St. Dionysius of Alexandria (d. 265), Of the One Substance

But the Word of God is substantial, endowed with an exalted and enduring nature, and is eternal with Himself, and is inseparable from Him, and can never fall away, but shall remain in an everlasting union. This Word created heaven and earth, and in Him were all things made. He is the arm and the power of God, never to be separated from the Father, in virtue of an indivisible nature, and, together with the Father, He is without beginning. This Word took our substance of the Virgin Mary; and in so far as He is spiritual indeed, He is indivisibly equal with the Father; but in so far as He is corporeal, He is in like manner inseparably equal with us.

-- St .Gregory Thaumaturgus (d. 270), On the Trinity

The compound is surely made tip of the simple elements, even as in the instance of Jesus Christ, who was made one (person), constituted by God the Word, and a human body which is of the seed of David, and who subsists without having any manner of division between the two, but in unity. You, however, appear to me to decline to admit a constitution after this fashion: to the effect that there is not in this person, the Son of God according to substance, but only the Wisdom according to participation. For you made this assertion, that the Wisdom bears dispensing, and therefore cannot be compounded; and you do not consider that the divine Wisdom remained undiminished, even as it was before it evacuated itself; and thus in this self-evacuation, which it took upon itself in compassion (for us), it continued undiminished and unchangeable. And this assertion you also make, that the Wisdom dwelt in Him, just as we also dwell in houses, the one in the other, and yet not as if we formed a part of the house, or the house a part of us.

-- The Antiochian presbyter Malchion, from the acts of the disputation against Paul of Samosata (272 AD)



http://www.tertullian.org/fathers2/ANF-06/anf06-42.htm

 

[Anto9us]

The Athanasian Creed ought to more accurately be called the Pseudo-Athanasian Creed, as it did not appear in a time or place when it would have been possible for the real St. Athanasius to have written it.

Amen.

 

[Rescued One]

Just making the point that the creeds grew in size and became more and more Hellenistic as they went along. Over a thousand years they went from 'we believe in God the Father, his Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost' to 'you can't be saved unless you believe God is an immaterial substance and without body parts and passions'. It's call getting it all wrong!

What is WRONG is stating that there are three gods in the Godhead and that Joseph Smith saw two of them!

 

[Jane_Doe]

What is WRONG is stating that there are three gods in the Godhead and that Joseph Smith saw two of them!

The Father and Son and Spirit are 3 separate persons, even Trinitarians agree with that.

 

[drstevej]

The Father and Son and Spirit are 3 separate persons...

What about Heavenly Mom? Again, she gets overlooked. Or is she a non-person ? A "sorta-god" ?

 

[withwonderingawe]

Christianity itself was born into a Hellenized world, and a Syrian world, and a Latin world, and a Coptic world, and a Berber North African world, and so on.

No it was born into a Jewish world and those men spoke Aramaic. When Nathanael first spoke to Jesus he said 'Rabbi, thou art the Son of El; thou art the King of Israel.' Now when John got around to writing it down it was written in Greek. They did speak their own style of Greek mixed with Aramaic something like Old English compared to a southern draw.

The first layer of apologetic writing is the New Testament itself;

Luke 1
1 Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,
2 Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word;
3 It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,
4 That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.

In all their writings their is no hint of an immaterial substance.

I'm taking this next part from a book called How Creek Philosophy Corrupted the Christian Concept of God, by Hopkins. I'm just giving the general ideas with a few short quotes sprinkled in.

Even in the first generation writings there is no concept of a 'substance' and God the Father is separate from the Son. Polycrap writing between 107 and before 150 completely separates them; "....Who shall believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and in His Father, who raised Him from the dead". There is another writing by an unknown author but written around 130 ad, he claims he was a disciple of the apostle. He writes "As a King sends his son, who is also king, so sent He Him; as God" (Epistle to Diognetus). He understand the principle of a King and His Prince and allows for the Son to be called God without violating the authority of the Father.

About 160ad those in Rome began calling the Christians atheist and it seems as if the apologist began trying to defend Christianity by framing it within the Hellenistic or metaphysical terminology . It is Justin who first starts using words which are unbiblical he calls the Father "unbegotten", no where in the Bible is the word used. Tatian presence a Hellenize view of God, "God is spirit, not pervading matter...".

Melito writing in 172 ad really starts using Greek wording and metaphysical terms. "There 'is' that which really exists and is called God....He changeth not, while everything else changes .... no eye can see him nor thought apprehend Him, nor language describe Him....", However he still separates the Father and Son; "...This is He who made the heaven and the earth and in the beginning together with the Father, fashioned man..."

In 177 ad Athenagoras goes all out and fully express God as any good platonistic Greek mind would;

But unto us, who distinguish God from matter and teach that matter is one thing and God another..."

He goes on from there incorporating more and more of Plato's metaphysical ideas. After that it's all down hill and the true Biblical God is lost in Greek Philosophy.

So when you start quoting someone from 300 ad I'm not impressed, he's just building upon non Biblical ideas getting further and further away the true God of the Bible.

 

[BigDaddy4]

Do you reject the Athanasian Creed? Do you think these Church Fathers were in apostasy?
I do.

I neither accept nor reject that Creed. I do, however, accept the Nicene and Apostles Creeds.

Another baseless and unfounded "apostasy" assertion? For the "great apostasy" to have happened, Jesus would be a liar in Matthew 28:20b "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Does your spirit confirm Jesus was a liar and broke his promise?

 

[Peter1000]

I neither accept nor reject that Creed. I do, however, accept the Nicene and Apostles Creeds.

Another baseless and unfounded "apostasy" assertion? For the "great apostasy" to have happened, Jesus would be a liar in Matthew 28:20b "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Does your spirit confirm Jesus was a liar and broke his promise?

What 'age' was Jesus talking about?

 

[Peter1000]

I neither accept nor reject that Creed. I do, however, accept the Nicene and Apostles Creeds.

Another baseless and unfounded "apostasy" assertion? For the "great apostasy" to have happened, Jesus would be a liar in Matthew 28:20b "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Does your spirit confirm Jesus was a liar and broke his promise?

It is interesting that you believe in both the Apostles creed and the Nicene creed?

They are so different. The Apostles creed is straight forward except for the Catholic church thing. I can believe in the Apostles creed.

But then the Nicene creed comes along 250 years later and adds a lot of unbiblical veriage (primarily to kill Arianism) and goes way overboard by stating things like 'begotten from the Father before all ages'. What scripture says this?
And 'of the same essence as the Father'. What scripture says this?

So way different creeds.

 

[Peter1000]

I neither accept nor reject that Creed. I do, however, accept the Nicene and Apostles Creeds.

Another baseless and unfounded "apostasy" assertion? For the "great apostasy" to have happened, Jesus would be a liar in Matthew 28:20b "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Does your spirit confirm Jesus was a liar and broke his promise?

Jesus meant the end of the apostlolic age, which was around 120ad.