First before anything, Peter, I want to say that I truly appreciate your reply, and I must ask forgiveness from you for my rudeness. I am sorry that I have offended you, and probably routinely do so, and have failed to approach matters in a more irenic fashion, as any witness to the Christian religion not just deserves but in fact demands. "Be as wise as serpents, and as harmless as doves" is the command given by the Lord Jesus Christ, and in that I have very much missed the mark. I have sinned; Lord have mercy.
Thank you also for your encouragement to keep trying anyway. I do need that sometimes, and since you and I interact quite a bit, I am happy to receive it from you. On the other hand, the flattery of my faulty intellect is shameful to my sense of proper spiritual orientation (i.e., we are not to think of ourselves as better than anyone, and I really don't; look at how I just had to apologize for being rude,
because I am in fact very rude...it's shameful
), so if you don't mind I'm going to skip over those parts of the your reply.
QUOTE="Peter1000, post: 74348292, member: 382212"]
One other thing, I look at you as a brother in Christ and love you for your zeal for Christ. I know I am anathema from you[/quote]
I would like to clarify something here, just so that it is on the record for any future conversation. Saying that someone or something is "anathema" means that it/they are outside the bounds of the Church. So when this was declared against early heretics like Nestorius or Arius, it was saying that they personally (and their ideas, which the councils had gathered to discuss and decide on) are not to be considered as within the Christian fold anymore. Since a parallel Arian 'church' of sorts existed until the 9th century or so (source: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick's
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy podcast on Ancient Faith Radio; I can't remember the exact episode or I'd link it), and the Nestorians still exist today (they call themselves the Church of the East, Assyrian Church, Ancient Church of the East, and are sometimes are called in academic or historical sources "The Persian Church"; there is also a very old group of them in India who are confusingly known locally as Chaldeans, though they have no obvious link to the modern Chaldean Catholic Church, which came out of Roman Catholic missionary activities among the Nestorians in what is now Iraq in the 16th century), it obviously is not saying that such people are to be personally damned or destroyed or physically fought or anything like that. It is simply a judgment passed on their doctrines, and in the case of the founders of the heresies which they have formed their Church around, it is a personal condemnation of those individuals. In other words, the modern Nestorian or God forbid the modern Arian (as there are some people on the internet who try to revive that...like a dog returning to its Geocities website) may be a believer in heresy which anathema to the Church, but this says nothing about them personally beyond that. They have a wrong belief, but they are not their organization -- they are an individual. And especially since in the modern day so many people are born into these churches with centuries old schisms and conflicts, it is not considered proper that they be held personally responsible for them. I suppose a very hard-headed person could say "Yes, but they are still observing and affirming the wrong belief, and remaining away from the true Church (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, whatever), so they are still anathema", but I don't get the sense that this is a popular approach in any tradition. Even reading those who have been used as a cudgel against my communion in particular, like John of Damascus (d. 749; who oddly enough is a saint among the Ethiopians, who are most definitely a part of the OO communion
), he writes against what he calls "the heresy of the Egyptians", which even though it's not something I recognize as my own faith is still at least pointed at the people
as a group, rather than at individuals. Similarly, in my own communion, St. Dionysius Bar Salibi (d. 1171) wrote "Against the Melkites" (a Syriac slur for Chalcedonians) to discuss what he saw as the problems with that
belief.
To put it even more simply and to quote HH Pope Shenouda III of thrice-blessed memory, our fight is against ideas, not people.
So in that way, no, you are not anathema to me. I am not a bishop and this is a message board, not a synod.
Mormonism, however, will be evaluated differently than
Mormons, as the individual is generally not responsible for the beliefs of the entire group (with the caveat that leaders who create and/or propagate the wrong beliefs and strengthen them will be treated more harshly; cf. the above distinction between Nestorius the individual and the average Nestorian believer).
but I am not from you, and I look forward to meeting you in the future, after it is all over, and comparing notes. God is merciful, and I do not doubt both of us in our zeal for Christ will be in his kingdom.
I truly believe that anything is possible in Christ, and that there are Mormons (and Muslims, and probably others of other religions that I have not personally encountered) who may indeed worship God as He seeks true worshipers to do. It's just not my place to say categorically when or with whom this is the case, as God's ways are far above my or any other person's ways. We can only hope and pray for the salvation of everyone, as this is Christ's own desire. And so we pray in the concluding prayer of every hour of the Agpeya (the Coptic book of daily prayers):
Have mercy on us, O God, and have mercy on us, who, at all times and in every hour, in heaven and on earth, is worshiped and glorified; Christ our God, the good, the long suffering, the abundant in mercy, and the great in compassion, who loves the righteous and has mercy on the sinners of whom I am chief; who does not wish the death of the sinner but rather that he returns and lives, who calls all to salvation for the promise of the blessings to come...
+++
I believe that while the apostles were alive the Church of Jesus Christ of First-century Saints had the binding and loosing power. This power is the power to bind one to Christ (save) or to loose one from Christ (damn).
I believe that as soon as the apostles were murdered and gone, this binding and loosing power was taken from the earth.
But
why was it taken from the earth? If God could restore His Church some 1,700-1,800 years after this happened, then surely He could prevent it from happening in the first place, if it had been His will. So I'm left to wonder: is the 'great apostasy' something that God wanted or willed to happen, and if so for what purpose? And if not, then why did He wait until JS went to pray in the grove as a teenager to restore things to how He apparently always wanted them to be? Does Mormonism teach that between the death of the last apostle and Joseph Smith, no one ever offered any sincere prayers to God for guidance of the Church, or no one ever rightly guided the Church towards keeping the commandments? I know you participated in my thread a while ago on Mor Philoxenos of Mabbug, the 5th-6th century monk and bishop who wrote extensively on the importance of keeping the commandments of Christ as entry into the Christian life, and you have also had what I would characterize as cautiously positive things to say about other early bishops like St. John Chrysostom.
Is it not at least possible that in the same way that I have just written that some Mormons
may worship God essentially despite their religious affiliation (as only God knows the heart of every person), some bishops and hence some measure of the early Church (bishops, priests, deacons, laity, etc.)
may have kept the true faith despite the apostasy that Mormonism claims would've been going on by the time of these saints who you have been exposed to and had mostly positive things to say about? I understand if you cannot categorically say that this was the case with regard to these specific examples or any specific example, as this is again the dynamic at play in leaving judgment of the individual (but not the organization or its leadership, necessarily) up to God, which is the general pattern you see in early Christian history (keeping in mind that I tune out of what's going on in the Greek and Roman churches very early on, on account of my own ecclesiastical affiliation; so I don't doubt that you can find many examples which would contradict my statement), but it would good to know for our future interactions whether or not you are willing to grant the possibility that this may have been the case somewhere during the long centuries before JS, even if you can't say where.
And I believe that it was restored to the earth by God and Jesus and angels so that men, once again hold that binding and loosing power to save.
I believe without this power, no body is saved, no matter how much they believe in Jesus Christ.
A question: Does Mormonism teach that men lacking that power thereby means
God somehow lacks that power?
And so if JS would have become a pastor with the Methodists or any other church, he would have been unable to be part of the saving process.
How would you or anyone have know that the apostasy or this particular answer to it (restoration) had even happened, in that case? Isn't it from Joseph Smith's own writings and other writings within the Mormon religion that this idea comes? So no JS (because he's a Methodist pastor instead of the restorer of the Church from its apostasy) means no apostasy, right? Or at least no knowledge of it. And so no restoration/no Mormonism, since nobody's any the wiser as to the need for it.
Or is it posited that in that case God would have raised up another person to have had the same experience, i.e., found the golden plates, translated them, published those translations as the BOM, etc.?
So to me you are trying to drive me away from the very church that I believe can get a person on the right path of salvation. The right path for Jesus Christ to give his grace and show his mercy to all those that believe on his name, and do what he has charged them to do.
Well, yes, because I don't believe that it is that. I recognize that you do, but this is the very basic difference between us on this level. So I say my peace, and you say yours, and hopefully we both think about it a bit, and the world keeps spinning.
The 'great apostasy' which forms the foundation of the restorationist narrative upon which Mormonism is built (and indeed all forms of restorationism, be they Christian or non-Christian) is not just fundamentally unproven, it is
unproveable, and furthermore historically unsound, given the many counterexamples that can be shown of people and groups within existing Christian churches performing the ordinances that Mormonism says were lost during the great apostasy, and showing forth the powers that Mormonism says were absent during this long period. I have argued such and will continue to do so, though hopefully without stirring up as much consternation.
From our discussion, you have to know that we would never believe that a nice guy Jesus has the power to save. Right? Jesus Christ is only Begotten Son of God, with the power and authority to not only create us, but to save us with his infinitely divine atonement.
This is not so much a matter of whether or not you would agree with that characterization of theology, but of what Mormonism theology says and very importantly does
not say about Jesus. Your Jesus figure may be more than a 'nice guy', but he is also not God from God, True Light From True Light, of one essence with the Father. (Because from our discussion I have found that Mormonism takes expressions like this in a carnal fashion that is quite simply outside of the bounds of Christianity.)
So stop with the nice guy Jesus, we never believed such a heretical thing. We have never demoted Jesus to a nice guy.
Again, in Mormonism, Jesus is something less than fully God.
We do not deny God or his Sons divinity and their power to save, never.
They are not of the same divinity. This much I have learned from you, and Jane_Doe, and other Mormon posters.
What we do not deny that there is a Trinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but what we do deny is that this Trinity somehow and in some strange way is 3 Gods or Persons in 1 God. That we deny.
Aye, there's the rub. This is anathema (again, please read this as "outside of the bounds of the Christian faith", not a
personal condemnation). There is no other theology that is acceptable in Christianity. Our fathers fought against the Sabellians, the Arians, and all the other heretics who denied the consubstantiality and/or distinct personhood of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. That Mormonism repackages these ideas is reason enough to reject it, but even outside of considering that, it is reason to say that Mormonism simply does not preach the God of Christianity, but a different God. Sometimes a different theology does indeed amount to a different God (not all the time, but sometimes; this is why we have things like the Nicene Creed to help us see when that line has been crossed on a basic level).
This is a long way from denying the true Trinity, which we bear testimony of, and will die before we deny God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
But your 'true trinity' is not the Holy Trinity as testified to in ~2,000 years of Christianity, from the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in 33 AD until now. So again, it is a different God entirely (or perhaps better said a different set of gods? I don't know what would be most accurate).
The problem we have is that our theology is not the same as your theology
This is indeed the problem.
and from your great fathers, if you do not believe what we believe you are blasphemous, satanic, God-denying, and anathema to us. We accept your anathema, and wish you well with your theology, that has been debated and debated and debated for thousands of years now.
Ehhh...for us in the Oriental Orthodox Church, from about the 50s (if we are to count things like Judaizing, which was dealt with at the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem mentioned in the book of Acts, as a kind of heresy) until 431. Or it could be argued from 325 (the start of the conciliar era) to 431. Everything after that is someone else's theological development which did sometimes include us (e.g., the Henotikon of Zeno, 482), but did not change our theology. Others have their own significant dates. The point is that the fact that it is debated or the time in which it has been debated is not an issue, as such debates are necessary to see where everyone stands.
You will find out soon enough what the circle of mostly octogenarian quasi-religious businessmen in Utah who couldn't prophesy that Tuesday is coming on a Monday afternoon, will do for all mankind in conjunction with Jesus Christ and his second coming. Be watchful and don't miss anything, it will be interesting to see.
Unsurprisingly, I simply do not believe this is a thing that will happen.
...
Hmm. See...this is what happens when I try to be 'nice'. We don't have anything to talk about anymore. "I believe X.", "I believe not-X." "...Okay." "Yeah." "..."