LDS Mormon godhood vs Christian Trinity - Thread Split

Alla27 · May 28, 2016

ViaCrucis said:
Because He is called Father not because He creates, but because He has begotten the Son. He never became Father, He is always Father because He is always Father of His eternal, uncreated Son.

-CryptoLutheran

how did you come up with this strange idea?

NYCGuy · May 28, 2016

Alla27 said:
I assume She is designing a new galaxy. She is a great Designer.
I assume She is teaching her children. She is a great Teacher.
I assume She is equal companion with Her Husband, our Heavenly Father.
I have lots of respect for this kind of Woman.

Where did the ancient Church established by Jesus Christ ever teach a belief in a Heavenly Mother deity married to God the Father?

fatboys · May 28, 2016

ViaCrucis said:
Because He is called Father not because He creates, but because He has begotten the Son. He never became Father, He is always Father because He is always Father of His eternal, uncreated Son.

-CryptoLutheran

Hurting again. I'm trying to grasp this.
If the son was uncreated then why is he the Son

ViaCrucis · May 29, 2016

Alla27 said:
how did you come up with this very strange idea?
I know it(the idea) is not from the Bible.

In the Bible God being called "Father" is in reference to Jesus Christ. "The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ". Jesus calls Him "My Father".

So that He is called Father because is Jesus' Father is explicitly biblical. He is not called Father because He creates things, but because He has begotten His only-begotten Son. Jesus, who is this only-begotten Son, is what? The Logos who was in the beginning with God and is God (John 1:1), yep.

On the contrary, that He is called Father because He is Christ's Father is biblical. That Jesus is the only-begotten Son, the Son who as the Logos was in the beginning with God and as God, well that's biblical too.

It's not that it's not biblical, it's probably just that you're unfamiliar with the historic teaching of the Christian Church.

-CryptoLutheran

ViaCrucis · May 29, 2016

fatboys said:
Hurting again. I'm trying to grasp this.
If the son was uncreated then why is he the Son

Because He is begotten. But He is "begotten, not made".

I would also argue that the Father-Son dynamic is, essentially, an approximation of language. Thinking that it's identical to the procreative father-son relationship that exists among us and the rest of the animal kingdom would be erroneous. As the Eternal Son has no "Mother". He is, rather, from all eternity begotten of the Father.

-CryptoLutheran

fatboys · May 29, 2016

ViaCrucis said:
Because He is begotten. But He is "begotten, not made".

I would also argue that the Father-Son dynamic is, essentially, an approximation of language. Thinking that it's identical to the procreative father-son relationship that exists among us and the rest of the animal kingdom would be erroneous. As the Eternal Son has no "Mother". He is, rather, from all eternity begotten of the Father.

-CryptoLutheran

Was he begotten as in his mind? He thought it out to have a son? I mean from what I understand you believe that God has always existed as he is now. Nothing more or nothing less. You beleive that the Son has always existed but was not the Father but was one with the Father. Yet there is only one God. How was Jesus begotten. Why does begotten in the bible different for us than God?

Albion · May 29, 2016

fatboys said:
Was he begotten as in his mind? He thought it out to have a son?

No. The word is used mainly in order not to imply that the Son was created or had any starting point in time but, rather, has existed from all eternity.

I mean from what I understand you believe that God has always existed as he is now. Nothing more or nothing less. You beleive that the Son has always existed but was not the Father but was one with the Father. Yet there is only one God. How was Jesus begotten.

We have not been given to know this, nor could we very well understand it in this mortal life. Try thinking of eternity itself and then try explaining to someone when it started, if you have doubts about that.

ViaCrucis · May 29, 2016

fatboys said:
Was he begotten as in his mind? He thought it out to have a son? I mean from what I understand you believe that God has always existed as he is now. Nothing more or nothing less. You beleive that the Son has always existed but was not the Father but was one with the Father. Yet there is only one God. How was Jesus begotten. Why does begotten in the bible different for us than God?

The term "begotten" speaks of the Father as Jesus' Source or Origin, the Son is from or of the Father, but not as a creature, and not as a human son is from or of his human father. It speaks to a fundamentally greater reality than we can fully comprehend.

Here is how Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar in his word Credo puts it,

"That he is Father we know in utmost fullness from Jesus Christ, who constantly makes loving, thankful, and reverent reference to him as his Origin. It is because he bears fruit out of himself and requires no fructifying that he is called Father, and not in the sexual sense, for he will be the Creator of man and woman, and thus contains the primal qualities of woman in himself in the same simultaneously transcending way as those of man. (The Greek gennad can imply both siring and bearing, as can the word for to come into being: ginomai.) Jesus’ words indicate that this fruitful self-surrender by the primal Origin has neither beginning nor end: It is a perpetual occurrence in which essence and activity coincide. Herein lies the most unfathomable aspect of the Mystery of God: that what is absolutely primal is no statically self-contained and comprehensible reality, but one that exists solely in dispensing itself: a flowing wellspring with no holding-trough beneath it, an act of procreation with no seminal vesicle, with no organism at all to perform the act. In the pure act of self-pouring-forth, God the Father is his self, or, if one wishes, a “person” (in a transcending way)."

And later

"That God is Father also means that he has a child. We transient creatures are not this child that God must have if he is to be called Father. There are billions of us, and none of us has a permanence that might be even remotely comparable to that of God. No, in order to be called Father, one who surrenders himself eternally, God must have a “single,” “only begotten” Son. (We call him Son, and not Daughter, because he will appear in the world as male, and will do so in order to represent to us the authority of the fruitful fatherly Origin.) Christianity stands or falls with this assertion that there is an inner-divine fruitfulness (the Spirit will be named in the immediately following article), for if God is not in himself love, then, in order to be love, he would need the world, and that would spell the end of his divinity—or we would have to characterize ourselves as part of God and thus ascribe necessity to ourselves."

God's existence is more than just a mere static existence, rather God is also His Act; the Act of the Son's generation is intrinsic to God's own Self, it is fundamentally the way in which God is God. God flows from God, Light emits Light. The interior Divine Activity--the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit--is the way in which God is God. The Father begets the Son, the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds. There is Love in its Source, Love in its Outpouring, and the Union of Both; Lover, Beloved, and the Bond of Love. Or as St. Augustine puts it:

"But what is love or charity, which divine Scripture so greatly praises and proclaims, except the love of good? But love is of some one that loves, and with love something is loved. Behold, then, there are three things: he that loves, and that which is loved, and love." - St. Augustine, On the Trinity, Book VIII.14

For it could not be that God is love unless there is an object to love; is the love of God selfish--then the divine revelation of love in Scripture fails, is the object of God's love His creation? Then God could not be love without the extradivine world of His creation. But rather God is love, and this love is intradivine, between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; this love is bound up in God's way of being God, having never begun and without end. The Father has so loved the Son, never having begun to love, but this love having always been, for it is God being God to love.

And so we have, in the Incarnation--in the sending of the Son and Logos who becomes flesh--who suffers for us and dies for us; not something new added to Who God is. We have instead the revelation of what it means for God to be God; God is God because He, in the words of Herbert McCabe, "throws Himself away in love."

-CryptoLutheran

Albion · May 29, 2016

Alla27 said:
how did you come up with this strange idea?

Uh...historic Christianity? And what's so strange about it when compared with Heavenly Mother doing the dishes?

mmksparbud · May 29, 2016

Albion said:
Uh...historic Christianity? And what's so strange about it when compared with Heavenly Mother doing the dishes?

They talk of heavenly mother, of God being human before being God, us existing before being born, using stones in a hat to decipher a message from God and shaking hands with the devil to see if he is real and call you strange!!!! Shaking hands!!! No wonder it took over a year to finally get an answer to how JS tested these apparitions of his!!

Albion · May 29, 2016

It's a small point, but the "strange" comment wasn't directed at a post of mine but one by ViaCrucis.

Peter1000 · May 29, 2016

Albion said:
You don't set out chairs for God to plunk down in.

There is the problem. Some Trinitarians will not answer a simple question. NYCGuy, a Trinitarian, did answer the question. He said there would be 3 chairs.

My simple question to you is: how many chairs would you put out for the Godhead you worship? Whether you believe it or not, your answer is the crux of your belief in God.

Albion · May 29, 2016

Peter1000 said:
There is the problem. Some Trinitarians will not answer a simple question. NYCGuy, a Trinitarian, did answer the question. He said there would be 3 chairs.

My simple question to you is: how many chairs would you put out for the Godhead you worship? .

Here's my problem...You like to say that so-and-so didn't answer your question, but when you do get answers, you still post that you didn't. I already answered this question.

Peter1000 · May 29, 2016

Albion said:
You take that exactly literally, then--that Jesus will come through the door of your home, in the flesh, and pull up a chair or three at the table, eh?

Read Luke 24:36-43 and you will know the answer to your question. If 1 member of the Godhead can do that, all 3 can.

So the answer for me is 3 chairs. It is not that complicated.

How many chairs would you set out for the Godhead if They came to sup with you?

Peter1000 · May 29, 2016

Albion said:
Here's my problem...You like to say that so-and-so didn't answer your question, but when you do get answers, you still post that you didn't. I already answered this question.

Sorry, I didn't see it. Try me one more time. 3 chairs or 1 chair?

Albion · May 29, 2016

Peter1000 said:
Read Luke 24:36-43 and you will know the answer to your question. If 1 member of the Godhead can do that, all 3 can.

So the answer for me is 3 chairs. It is not that complicated.

Well, sure. We know what your view of the nature of God or the gods happens to be. The issue until a moment ago was supposed to be about the historic Christian understanding, though, wasn't it?

withwonderingawe · May 29, 2016

Albion said:
You take that exactly literally, then--that Jesus will come through the door of your home, in the flesh, and pull up a chair or three at the table, eh?

Yes I do,
John 14:
18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Albion · May 29, 2016

withwonderingawe said:
Yes I do,
John 14:
18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

All true. Now show us where God will fulfill that promise by walking through the door to your kitchen or dining room in the flesh, sit down at the table, and share a meal with you. If it were the case that those verses used such imagery, they would stil be open to a symbolic meaning, but they don't even describe--in figurative language or literal--what you say you're taking from them!

I side with the historic faith in understanding these verses as saying "I will come to you," not "I will be arriving on the 3:15 train wearing a blue suit. Pick me up at the station." To me, it's as clear as day that the message is about a spiritual connection.

In other words, NO chairs.

Peter1000 · May 29, 2016

Albion said:
Well, sure. We know what your view of the nature of God or the gods happens to be. The issue until a moment ago was supposed to be about the historic Christian understanding, though, wasn't it?

No, the issue has been for some time, just exactly what I posted: That Jesus really did come to his disciples after his resurrection and he did eat with them. Now did he pull up 1 chair and plop himself down (as you put it), the scripture didn't get that detailed. We can say with respect to chairs, in this case, there would have only been 1 chair that Jesus sat on. God the Father was in heaven, and the HS is not mentioned. But if all 3 had been there, like at the baptism of Jesus, there would have had to be 3 chairs.

Again, your answer side-steps the question and tries to move on to another issue, without a resolution. So tell me once more, what post did you answer the chair question, so I can read it, or just answer it simply by saying I believe there would need to be 3 chairs or 1 chair if the Godhead came to sup with me.

Peter1000 · May 29, 2016

Albion said:
All true. Now show us where God will fulfill that promise by walking through the door to your kitchen or dining room in the flesh, sit down at the table, and share a meal with you. If it were the case that those verses used such imagery, they would stil be open to a symbolic meaning, but they don't even describe--in figurative language or literal--what you say you're taking from them!

I side with the historic faith in understanding these verses as saying "I will come to you," not "I will be arriving on the 3:15 train wearing a blue suit. Pick me up at the station." To me, it's as clear as day that the message is about a spiritual connection.

In other words, NO chairs.

I just read this. You are right about the spiritual connection, I understand your thoughts on this, hence no chairs. But hypothetically, if the Godhead were to come to your home to sup with you, how many chairs would you make available?

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