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Notes -
...how come?
see here.
But can you provide a more detailed explanation?
Mormon cosmology is completely different from the Abrahamic religions. In Mormonism, God did not create the universe, he simply organized preexisting matter. God himself is part of and subservient to the material universe.
This leads to a bunch of strange (though arguably coherent) beliefs, many of which are explained in this less-than-sympathetic cartoon, although from what I can tell everything in it is technically correct.
Also, endless celestial sex. You can decide for yourself whether this is a positive or a negative.
I think these high cosmology arguments are complicated by the fact that Mormon services are essentially indistinguishable from low church protestant ones. The average Protestant would feel more comfortable in a Mormon service than a Catholic one in terms of knowing what to do.
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Do you have a source on that? As someone who grew up in that faith, I never heard that.
Abraham 3:24
Creating the Earth out of materials existing in the universe doesn't mean that God didn't create the universe itself.
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...yeah, if that's all correct then it would be hard to call it Christianity.
There is no possible way Doctrine and Covenants 132:19-20 can square with Christian scripture.
The angels being subject to saved humans as a result of their union with Christ is pretty basic Christian soteriology, and an early form of it shows up in 1 Corinthians (chapter 6:2-3):
Angels are also never described as being "in the image of God" the way humans are, although they're considered to have a certain resemblence to the divine glory.
As for the "they shall be gods" part, well, that's also in the Bible, famously quoted by Jesus as an unbreakable line of scripture (John 10:34-36):
While there's a difference in the kind of divinity being ascribed, it's also fundamental to Catholic and Orthodox understandings of salvation since the early middle ages that the ultimate destiny of man is to partake of the divine nature by grace. The phrase appears across Christian history that a person who has achieved perfect sanctification could be said to "have everything that God has," to be divinized. What you've quoted is actually the least distinct element and phrasing in Mormon soteriology, from the point of view of analyzing historical Christianity in its broad scope.
This is a reference to psalm 82, one of the oldest parts of the old testament. The commonly accepted interpretation today among Christians is that it refers to human judges at the time of Moses who were called "elohim" because they judged according to the word of God. A common academic interpretation is that it's a carry over from polytheistic Cannanite religion which even had two separate characters later merged into a single God. And a third interpretation proposed by the late Michael Heiser is that it has something to do with the beings we commonly refer to as angels serving on God's divine council.
It is worth noting two things, I think. First, that the word elohim used in psalm 82 is sometimes used to refer to beings that obviously aren't Gods (e.g. spirits in sheol), and second that Jesus is using this passage as a defense of his own divinity, which he has described as something unique (the son does nothing that the father doesn't do, sent by the father, the son of man--presumably the one from Daniel, etc.). That doesn't clarify a whole lot about this passage, except to say that it's difficult to know for certain exactly how this passage would have been understood in the first or second century AD, but it has probably never been taken to mean that people actually become Gods in the afterlife.
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uh, sure, I guess. The following is speaking very generally and aiming for as neutral a view as I can manage.
Jews (speaking very broadly here as I will for all groups) think they have a revelation from God, and that revelation is at a certain point closed. Then they have a system pertaining to how that revelation interfaces with their community, which may not be closed per se but where thousands of years of tradition usually vastly outweigh present concerns.
Christians believe the Jewish revelation is valid, but don't see it as closed, and believe there was a subsequent revelation which at a later point closed. They likewise have a community-interface system which likewise draws on thousands of years of tradition, which is completely incompatible with the Jewish system. So while both Jews and Christians think the Old Testament is the word of God, Jews think the New Testament is heretical pagan nonsense and the church and its traditions have no valid connection to God, while (many) Christians think Jews missed the boat, the rabbinical system is in the same way heretical nonsense, made up to paper over the fact that Judaism ended with the destruction of the temple, when it became impossible to fulfill the requirements of the Law.
Mormons are to Christians as Christians are to Jews. They have what might be described as a Newer Testament, which they see as a subsequent revelation to the Christian one, which is, you guessed it, now also closed. And they have their own community-interface system which is only a couple hundred years old but hey give them awhile, sheesh. And to their credit, a couple hundred years ain't nothing, and they do seem to be going fairly strong to date, but this system is likewise incompatible with the Christian system in the same way that the Christian system is incompatible with the Jewish one. Christians think the Newer testament is bad fanfic, in the same way Jews think the Christian New Testament is bad fanfic, for similar reasons.
In each case, you have the older version rejecting the newer version as a heresy, and the newer version thinking the older version missed the boat. ...Only, I'm not actually sure whether Mormons think Christians are fine as-is, or should ideally become Mormons, the way Christians think Jews should become Christian. I'd assume so, just on a naïve application of memetics.
Actually, the Mormons make a big deal about having a living prophet, who can receive new revelation as needed. This has come in handy a couple of times when political considerations have forced the church to update its doctrine in a hurry, such as in 1890 when they stopped practicing polygamy in order for Utah to join the Union, or in 1978 when God changed his mind about black people.
It's weird to me how the Mormons seem like the most boring, steadfast, buttoned-down, no-nonsense of all religious groups in the way they act. And yet their actual religious dogma seems like one of the craziest. Sure, just dial up their direct hotline to god whenever they need an update on current political issues, that makes sense...
I mean, yes? If you think God is real, God has the ability to send messages, and God wants certain things of humanity, then it's pretty logical for God to send such messages whenever humans get confused about what he said. Judaism has plenty of prophets doing this, and pagans typically had oracles.
The overly-convenient nature of the Mormons' updates certainly doesn't gel very well with claims that their hotline is plugged into something eternal, but the notion of having a hotline to the divine is really a pretty-logical extension of Actually Believing In Gods.
So, does God wait for the Mormons to elect their president and then start sending him messages? Or does he privately message someone first and then that guy uses his secret divine knowledge to become president? Either way seems a little suspicious to me, but then I'm just a dirty heathen.
Mormons don't elect their president. The next president (relevant now, given that the recent death of the last president) is technically chosen by the apostles. I think it could theoretically be any apostle, but it's always the most senior apostle. New apostles are also chosen by the apostles, and could be any member.
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The LDS church famously has an open canon, though the current books are considered the "standard works" that make up the existing canon. But it's perfectly possible in Mormon theology that the church could, by "common consent," add a new work if there was an overwhelming consensus that a text should be added to the canon.
Leading to considerable efforts to add the Book of Arnold in some quarters.
Which I found particularly hilarious because once you take the idea of a separate revelation of Jesus to North America seriously, the possibility of a separate revelation to Africa of the type that Elder Cunningham appears to deliver is entirely plausible at a theological level. "One with the people of Africa" indeed.
I think the core message of the play is it's not stupid if it works.
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I stand corrected!
...my main point, in any case, is that in any of these questions of categorizing people, there's the answer from the people in the category, and there's the answer of the people outside the category, and neither is obviously correct.
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I was looking for examples of specific theological beliefs or other aspects of Mormonism that might render Mormonism incompatible with Christianity as it's traditionally conceived. Looks like Quantumfreakonomics has it covered though.
I can. The quickest one is they reject the oneness of God and Christ. This isn't in any standard nontrinitarian sense, it is in the uniquely Mormon polytheistic sense as they believe God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct gods, among multitudes. They employ rhetorical tricks, they believe in a "godhead" that is "one" and you'll find that "one" often in quotations because it's an equivocation. As trinitarian Christians mean one in the literal sense of one essential being, Mormons mean one in the figurative sense, acting in a common purpose. You could say that of the religion, the Church of Latter-Day Equivocations. Smith used a bunch of words because they sounded Christian when he meant anything but.
Yahweh said to Moses "I am." Christ said to the Pharisees "Before Abraham was, I am." The Pharisees understood he was claiming to be God, that's why they tried to stone him. Mormons post-hoc their nontrinitarian beliefs by saying instances of YHWH/Jehovah in the OT actually refer to Christ. False to an absurd degree, in the number of verses clearly describing Yahweh as God the Father, and those that go on to say "and no other gods exist."
Smith followed in the line of Muhammad. He gutted a religion, wore it as a skinsuit, and in America exploited some of its inertia for his cult. There are nominally Christian sects that also reject the divinity of Christ. Same goes for them. That's not what's really relevant here, though. Apropos this discourse, you see among righties some saying "Christendom is under attack" and the retort spiral of "Mormons aren't Christians" / "Yes we are" et refrain. Christianity, most historically, is the belief in Christ and God as one. Most Christians today believe in Christ and God as one. They think Mormons believe the same. If they knew Mormons didn't, they would no longer consider them Christian but a deeply heretical, borderline if not overtly blasphemous, likely Satanic cult. Dante would find Joseph Smith in the Eighth Circle, Ninth Bolgia. Ever-cleft from groin to abdomen.
Personally, I find polygamy, especially polygyny, as so gravely wicked as to be self-apparently disqualifying of Smith and so all of his work. Today, a man who wants multiple wives hates women to a degree I don't know how to put into words, and he hates men even more. Smith had 30-40 "wives." And that's always what it's about, at least in the US. Men go to remarkable lengths so they can have sex with whichever women they want.
Yes, they had a "revelation" to stop the practice, because if they hadn't, the army would have done it for them.
We believe the godhead is one in the scriptural sense.
It's hard to get more clear and straightforward than this.
On the meta level, you have reasons to think that Jesus was speaking figuratively here but literally when he said "there are no gods besides me." I have reasons to think the opposite. We could get into a very long, tiresome debate about which is correct, and as loathe as I am to begin such a debate, it's still far preferable to your current insinuation that the question is entirely settled; that one approach is straightforwardly un-biblical and heretical while the other is fully and self-evidently sound.
I suppose you would fully condemn the many wives God gave to David, too?
Please read the declaration, lol. You're implying here something like "LDS leaders pretended that God coincidentally told them to stop practicing polygamy just in time to avoid direct conflict with the army" It's actually the exact opposite--the declaration explicitly says that polygamy was ended due to external interference.
This is just dishonest.
You believe the "godhead" is "one" in the "'scriptural' 'sense'" via the eisegetical interpretation your predecessors tore apart the scripture in service of making, not what Christians have held for most of 2,000 years.
The meaningful historic definition of Christian can be shorthanded as one who holds and espouses the beliefs found in the Nicene Creed. The LDS rejects this explicitly. You claim to be Christian because you believe in a figure you call Christ (cc. "LDE"), not because you believe in the same Christ as those of the Nicene Creed. This is a matter of historic distinction of groups. The grand intersection of Christianity with the macro of world history is those of the Nicene Creed. You are not in one measure the same as us but through equivocation. You may continue to equivocate, we are not the same. For the most visibly signaling theological distinction, the Catholic Church, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches have interdenominational recognition of the validity of baptisms; all deny the validity of Mormon baptism. Mormons recognize no baptisms but their own. I repeat, and your leaders affirm for "The Great Apostasy," we are not the same.
I am also disinterested in matters of indeed settled theology. The Church is a monarchy, and while there is the priesthood of the laity, they are not charged with authority on matters of doctrine. The reason for this may be seen in many places but no better in its crudeness than the strained-to-shattered readings Mormon elders use to justify their doctrine. Stepping on John 1, which makes explicit the consubstantial nature of the Logos and God, to convolute John 17 as "This means there's 3 gods actually." Or far worse in the first LDS link, 1 Cor. 15:35-41 as Paul's secret code about resurrected states of being. This isn't even strained as I can say of John 17 and it's not the childish misunderstanding of the third heaven mention of 2. Cor. 12; it is not possible to have arrived at this interpretation without willful malfeasance. He's talking about astronomical objects, also called heavenly bodies.
The Septuagint condemns him. Solomon was tested with the lechery of his father, he failed, his chalice was filled with iniquity as the sin was visited upon him fully, the kingdom fell. There's a lesson in this.
The Edmund-Tucker Act preceded the "revelation" and this is what Woodruff is quoted as verbatim:
What you call eisegesis, I call exegesis. As I said, no matter your beliefs you must hold that some scriptures are figurative and others literal, and there is no clear reasonable-beyond-all-doubt key contained in the Bible to determine which is which.
I agree some of the other examples are strained, so it's a good thing we don't hold to sola scriptura. Nobody is claiming that 1 Cor. 15 + 2 Cor. 12 is proof, or even sufficient evidence, that there are multiple kingdoms of heaven. Nor, to be clear, am I saying that scripture is clear about the nature of the Godhead either. Then again, I have the freedom to say the Bible isn't perfectly clear about the nature of the Godhead/Trinity, because I don't believe that there's a multiple-choice test to get into heaven predicated on whether we correctly answer that God is three persons consubstantial in essence.
Dishonest. I didn't ask if you'd condemn David, I asked if you'd condemn the wives given to him by God. Do you deny that God says he gave those wives to David? Do you have some interpretation of those scriptures where God gave those wives to David, but accepting them was a sin?
I condemn David too, not for his polygamy, but for his involvement with Uriah and his wife, as well as perhaps the later polygamous excesses (after this conversation with Nathan).
Well, yeah, that's what I said. Is "the government has made demands, and God told me to acquiesce to them" not allowed as a form of revelation? I suppose Jeremiah was wrong to tell the Israelites to submit to Babylon, and they should have listened to Hananiah instead?
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So if it's legalized it would pop right back around? Is social tolerance enough?
It could. It's not currently authorized in countries where it's legal, but it never really went away. We actually still practice it in the sense that, if a man's wife dies, he can remarry and be sealed eternally to the second woman too, provided she was previously single.
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Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob also all had multiple wives/concubines. Not as many as David, but David isn't really a great example in my opinion (because he was condemned for wickedness in the end).
Yeah, but I'm not aware of anywhere where their polygyny is explicitly endorsed by God the way David's is.
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