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Help with Moroni 8:18


thatjimguy

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Hey all! A little help with tackling this please?

This is based on two premises:

  1. "from all eternity to all eternity" includes forever in the past as well as in the future
  2. "unchangeable" includes forever in the past

There is no definite basis for supporting Premise 1 in the scriptures, because they generally don't discuss the nature of retro-eternity. The Bible, in particular, seems to be concerned with time in our current frame of existence (the human mortal condition on this earth). Within this frame, it is correct to say that God has never changed, and that He will never change.

Now, to say that God is unchangeable does not necessarily mean that He has always been unchangeable. If He has reached a stage from which He will no longer change, He has become unchangeable. Premise 2 is therefore also questionable.

With these two premises being questionable, the discrepancy between Moroni 8:18 and the later statement by Joseph Smith is largely reduced or eliminated, and it is possible to reconcile them. When the author of this video says that he believes Moroni 8:18, he fails to explicitly identify the two premises I have just described, but it is obvious that he implies them.

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Hey all! A little help with tackling this please?

...

Hi Jim,

The Prophet Joseph was given the calling of restoring the truth about God to the earth. That is what prophets do for the Lord.

And yet, the complete understanding of God has yet to be given to the world because Joseph was killed, and the people did not want more truth.

So this guy has successfully brought up two contradictory things that Joseph taught. I am certain, however, that these two contradictory things are only seemingly contradictory, and can be reconciled. I am certain that if Joseph had not been killed, and the people had accepted him, these contradictory things would have been reconciled by him.

We know from what Joseph revealed that the term God does not refer to JUST one finite personage. That is the key to reconciling these two matters. The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are THREE finite separate personages, and yet they are One God.

Did the Father have Father before him? Why even use the terms Father and Son if there is not a lineage of beings?

So the lineage of God, like Moroni 8:18 says "is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity". That lineage is in total unity and thus is one infinite being that has existed without beginning.

But the finite Jesus of Nazareth, like all Sons before him who became a Father in that lineage, had to overcome all things before obtaining the position of Father. And our Father in heaven likewise was once a Son and had to overcome all things-- as Joseph was teaching.

So we see that Moroni 8:18 is correct in an infinite sense, and what Joseph was teaching is correct in a finite sense. I am convinced that it is important to understand both the infinite and the finite truths about "God" to develop true and complete faith in God.

This is my answer to him. You are welcome to send it on to him. Or maybe I will if you do not want to.

Richard

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Again, agreeing with Nic, this guy does not take in account the verse in D&C.

Everlasting is a name of God, that it is.

Furthermore, God deals with all people equally on a personal level (which is why we have both the old law and the new law), so just because he deals with people differently according to what works best for them doesn't mean he changes =P.

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I think the easiest (and truest) answer is that they are all statements of perspective. As far as we are concerned, God is and always has been God. We have no reference to anything else. When God entered the circle the creates our concept of the infinite, he was God, and will continue to be God. Even so, I think the statements are simplistic. True enough, but still simplistic. And for the purpose of reaching eternal life, nothing else is particularly important. Change is all about perspective, and one of the unique characters of God is that space and time can be compartmentalized in a way that it isn't for us.

Last point: Within the context of Psalms, we are all gods. If as a man, God was still a god, then really...he hasn't changed. I've always believed that the essence of evil is good gone bad. To become bad is change. To be good is our natural, spiritual state. If His purpose, like ours, was to be God-like, and he achieved it, then he really has been God from eternity to eternity. Why? Because anything that he did that was sinful in his progress has been repented of...meaning it never happened. In truth, God has always been perfect. Just like we can be.

PacMan

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How many real numbers are there between any two points on a number line? Infinite. Therefore, it is possible to have a Being who is God for an infinite number of years and yet there is a point before which He was not a God and also a point after in which He might not be a God (relative to the present). It's simply a matter of smaller and larger infinites.

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BCSpace,

You wrote:

How many real numbers are there between any two points on a number line? Infinite. Therefore, it is possible to have a Being who is God for an infinite number of years and yet there is a point before which He was not a God and also a point after in which He might not be a God (relative to the present). It's simply a matter of smaller and larger infinites.

Zeno's paradoxes have made a comeback!

The argument you present here cannot "save" the claim that God is infinite with respect to time. It rests on the same mathematical fallacy as the argument that Achilles can never catch up with the tortoise, or the argument that it is impossible to traverse any distance (that is, that motion is impossible).

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BCSpace,

You wrote:

Zeno's paradoxes have made a comeback!

The argument you present here cannot "save" the claim that God is infinite with respect to time. It rests on the same mathematical fallacy as the argument that Achilles can never catch up with the tortoise, or the argument that it is impossible to traverse any distance (that is, that motion is impossible).

Rob... I would agree, he is infinite in respect to this time. However, it is possible to be infinite in one time, and finite in another (time is just a measure of one object compared to another). All things that effect a universe at all must be trapped inside a time-field of a sort (or else they could not move). So BC_Space would be correct - but I'm not sure in the way he was originally intending.

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BCSpace,

You wrote:

Zeno's paradoxes have made a comeback!

The argument you present here cannot "save" the claim that God is infinite with respect to time. It rests on the same mathematical fallacy as the argument that Achilles can never catch up with the tortoise, or the argument that it is impossible to traverse any distance (that is, that motion is impossible).

Lurking, lurking. Wait for it...

P.S. Zeno's paradox doesn't apply where the distance is infinite. Only where the distance to "catch-up" is the erroneous measurement. There is no such artificial limitation on the infinite.

P.S.S. I would have hoped that you treat the text as Bokovy presented it.

P.S.S.S. But let us assume that by the end of this life, you have fully repented of all sin. Would it not be correct enough to say that in the eyes of God, you have lived a perfect life? Is that not the miracle of the atonement and mercy of Christ?

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Tom me, the term "God" is far more than a personal name and singular identity. If the term "God" were exclusively a personal identity like a personal name of someone, then there might be a conflict in my mind.

But the term "God" also denotes a title, a status, a position of ultimate authority, a righteous being, a glorified Man of Holiness.

A Man of Holiness will not be a fickle, capricious Man. This is what I believe is meant by "Unchangeable". Not that God is a static, sedentary, or feeling-less, lifeless being that never recognizes the passage of one feeling to another, but that he is a dynamic being, who both rejoices and mourns with his children. And that it is the attributes of perfection and fullness that ACCOMPANY his title that do not change depending upon our whimsy.

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All,

Moroni 8:18 affirms that God "is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity." This language clearly means that God's existence stretches backward infinitely as well as forward infinitely. That is, it means that God has always existed and been unchangeable and that he will always exist and be unchangeable. No one here, I assume, is willing to deny that "to all eternity" means that God will continue to exist forever and ever, absolutely without end. Given that understanding, which I think is beyond reasonable doubt, "from all eternity" in this same context must mean that God's existence goes back forever and ever, absolutely without beginning.

This isn't the only place in the LDS scriptures where this language is used. Mosiah 3:5 describes Jesus Christ as "the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity." Alma 13:7 states that the order of the high priesthood of the Son of God "was from the foundation of the world; or in other words, being without beginning of days or end of years, being prepared from eternity to all eternity, according to his foreknowledge of all things." Notice here that being "from eternity to all eternity" is synonymous with "being without beginning of days or end of years." Moses 6:7 describes Jesus Christ as "him who was without beginning of days or end of years, from all eternity to all eternity." Twice more the Book of Moses describes the Lord as being "from all eternity to all eternity" (Moses 7:29, 31). Joseph Smith's revelations during the first two years of the LDS Church also express the same idea. D&C 39:1 says, "Hearken and listen to the voice of him who is from all eternity to all eternity, the Great I Am, even Jesus Christ." Here, in traditional Christian fashion, Joseph Smith uses the words "the Great I Am" as a title of deity that expresses the absolute eternity of Jesus Christ. Likewise, Joseph Smith affirmed concerning the Lord, "From eternity to eternity he is the same, and his years never fail" (D&C 76:4).

Such statements do not appear in the LDS scriptures produced after 1832, but the above statements all seem rather clearly to express the traditional Christian belief that God, the personal Creator of the universe, exists eternally as God, without any beginning or end of his existence or of his divine nature. This conclusion is consistent with the evidence (and there's a lot of it) to show that before 1833 Joseph Smith accepted the same generic Christian conception of God that he had inherited from his early nineteenth-century Protestant Christian environment.

One suggestion for circumventing this conclusion is that God might be "infinite in one time, but finite in another." This simply won't work, because the Book of Mormon, the Book of Moses, and D&C all state that God has been God "from all eternity." The word all excludes the notion that there might be an eternity past in which God wasn't already God.

Another suggestion that has been made is that it is not God himself (the person or being we call God) but "the lineage of God" that is eternal. This explanation simply doesn't engage the specific statements quoted above. It is "God," "the Lord Omnipotent," "the Lord" himself, "the Great I am, even Jesus Christ," who is "from all eternity to all eternity."

A third explanation is that God has always existed but has not always been God; rather, he was a being who progressed to become God. But Moroni 8:18 affirms that God "is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity." The suggestion that he was "a god" even before he became "God" doesn't solve this problem, because that still constitutes a change. Of course, this idea simply isn't present in any of the above passages; it must be read into them on the assumption that these texts must be made to fit the later theological paradigm.

David Bokovoy commented, not on Moroni 8:18, but on Psalm 90:2. He points out that 'olam can be used in the Hebrew Bible to express ancientness or indefinitely long periods of time. For example, the Nephilim are described as mighty men "of old," using the same Hebrew phrase translated "from everlasting" in Psalm 90:2 (me'olam). The Bible can describe the mountains or hills as 'olam, that is, as "everlasting" in the sense that they are extremely ancient and will also be around long after we have lived and died (Gen. 49:26; Deut. 33:15). All true, but all irrelevant to Psalm 90:2, which has the same balanced description of God as being God "from 'olam to 'olam." Again, everyone will have to admit that "to 'olam" does not mean merely that Yahweh will be God for a very long time, but means that he will be God absolutely forever and ever, with no end. In this context, "from 'olam" must also mean that God has been God absolutely without beginning. This meaning fits naturally in the context of the whole verse, which affirms that Yahweh was God before the mountains, and even before the earth or the whole world, which Yahweh himself created.

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All,

Moroni 8:18 affirms that God "is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity." This language clearly means that God's existence stretches backward infinitely as well as forward infinitely. That is, it means that God has always existed and been unchangeable and that he will always exist and be unchangeable. No one here, I assume, is willing to deny that "to all eternity" means that God will continue to exist forever and ever, absolutely without end. Given that understanding, which I think is beyond reasonable doubt, "from all eternity" in this same context must mean that God's existence goes back forever and ever, absolutely without beginning.

This isn't the only place in the LDS scriptures where this language is used. Mosiah 3:5 describes Jesus Christ as "the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity." Alma 13:7 states that the order of the high priesthood of the Son of God "was from the foundation of the world; or in other words, being without beginning of days or end of years, being prepared from eternity to all eternity, according to his foreknowledge of all things." Notice here that being "from eternity to all eternity" is synonymous with "being without beginning of days or end of years." Moses 6:7 describes Jesus Christ as "him who was without beginning of days or end of years, from all eternity to all eternity." Twice more the Book of Moses describes the Lord as being "from all eternity to all eternity" (Moses 7:29, 31). Joseph Smith's revelations during the first two years of the LDS Church also express the same idea. D&C 39:1 says, "Hearken and listen to the voice of him who is from all eternity to all eternity, the Great I Am, even Jesus Christ." Here, in traditional Christian fashion, Joseph Smith uses the words "the Great I Am" as a title of deity that expresses the absolute eternity of Jesus Christ. Likewise, Joseph Smith affirmed concerning the Lord, "From eternity to eternity he is the same, and his years never fail" (D&C 76:4).

Such statements do not appear in the LDS scriptures produced after 1832, but the above statements all seem rather clearly to express the traditional Christian belief that God, the personal Creator of the universe, exists eternally as God, without any beginning or end of his existence or of his divine nature. This conclusion is consistent with the evidence (and there's a lot of it) to show that before 1833 Joseph Smith accepted the same generic Christian conception of God that he had inherited from his early nineteenth-century Protestant Christian environment.

One suggestion for circumventing this conclusion is that God might be "infinite in one time, but finite in another." This simply won't work, because the Book of Mormon, the Book of Moses, and D&C all state that God has been God "from all eternity." The word all excludes the notion that there might be an eternity past in which God wasn't already God.

Another suggestion that has been made is that it is not God himself (the person or being we call God) but "the lineage of God" that is eternal. This explanation simply doesn't engage the specific statements quoted above. It is "God," "the Lord Omnipotent," "the Lord" himself, "the Great I am, even Jesus Christ," who is "from all eternity to all eternity."

A third explanation is that God has always existed but has not always been God; rather, he was a being who progressed to become God. But Moroni 8:18 affirms that God "is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity." The suggestion that he was "a god" even before he became "God" doesn't solve this problem, because that still constitutes a change. Of course, this idea simply isn't present in any of the above passages; it must be read into them on the assumption that these texts must be made to fit the later theological paradigm.

David Bokovoy commented, not on Moroni 8:18, but on Psalm 90:2. He points out that 'olam can be used in the Hebrew Bible to express ancientness or indefinitely long periods of time. For example, the Nephilim are described as mighty men "of old," using the same Hebrew phrase translated "from everlasting" in Psalm 90:2 (me'olam). The Bible can describe the mountains or hills as 'olam, that is, as "everlasting" in the sense that they are extremely ancient and will also be around long after we have lived and died (Gen. 49:26; Deut. 33:15). All true, but all irrelevant to Psalm 90:2, which has the same balanced description of God as being God "from 'olam to 'olam." Again, everyone will have to admit that "to 'olam" does not mean merely that Yahweh will be God for a very long time, but means that he will be God absolutely forever and ever, with no end. In this context, "from 'olam" must also mean that God has been God absolutely without beginning. This meaning fits naturally in the context of the whole verse, which affirms that Yahweh was God before the mountains, and even before the earth or the whole world, which Yahweh himself created.

I see a huge flaw in this definition of "unchangeable": such an unchangeable being could never do anything different at time 1 than at time 2, because doing so would involve some change in the use of His agency. Therefore, God could not have created Adam and Eve, because these are two different creatures that were created at different times.

Can you reconcile your explanation of the unchangeableness of God with this?

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I see a huge flaw in this definition of "unchangeable": such an unchangeable being could never do anything different at time 1 than at time 2, because doing so would involve some change in the use of His agency. Therefore, God could not have created Adam and Eve, because these are two different creatures that were created at different times.

Can you reconcile your explanation of the unchangeableness of God with this?

Also, wasn't the "incarnation" of Christ a change to this unchangeable God?

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Hello Rob,

David Bokovoy commented, not on Moroni 8:18, but on Psalm 90:2. He points out that 'olam can be used in the Hebrew Bible to express ancientness or indefinitely long periods of time. For example, the Nephilim are described as mighty men "of old," using the same Hebrew phrase translated "from everlasting" in Psalm 90:2 (me'olam). The Bible can describe the mountains or hills as 'olam, that is, as "everlasting" in the sense that they are extremely ancient and will also be around long after we have lived and died (Gen. 49:26; Deut. 33:15). All true, but all irrelevant to Psalm 90:2, which has the same balanced description of God as being God "from 'olam to 'olam."

Since you recognize that these passages illustrate that

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David,

Before we debate this further, I would like to ask you a couple of related questions.

1. How might the Hebrew Bible have stated that God had existed as God from eternity past, in such a way that you would admit that there is no plausible exegetical escape from this understanding?

2. Is not Joseph Smith's language in the Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, and D&C as explicit in English as it could have been on this point -- and if you don't think so, how else might Joseph have expressed the idea so as to avoid the same sort of exegetical escape you use in Psalm 90:2?

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Actually, D&C 132 uses the term "eternal lives" to mean the cyclic nature of segments of time that just keep going (i.e. the "ages") in the "eternal round". So I don't really understand where the problem is theologically here. the word eternal or eternity just becomes the modern container for that concept. I would say the ages of the ages means the same type of thing, a cyclic repetitive nature of rhythmic time.

Ol'e Hick coughs up an Eternal diatribe!-------

The term we find so familiar in describing God

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Actually, D&C 132 uses the term "eternal lives" to mean the cyclic nature of segments of time that just keep going (i.e. the "ages") in the "eternal round". So I don't really understand where the problem is theologically here. the word eternal or eternity just becomes the modern container for that concept. I would say the ages of the ages means the same type of thing, a cyclic repetitive nature of rhythmic time.

Vs 55 reads-- "...eternal lives in the eternal worlds."

I do not know if this means lives in the ages in the worlds of the coming ages or what?

Words are more than containers. If we are unsure of what a word means, then we are lost in trying to understand the meaning of a text.

If Joseph Smith did not mean eternity in a literal way (endless time/ or beyond all the realms of time) why did he use the word at all? Why didn't he just use the word 'time' or as you mention cyclic or rhythmic time like he did elsewhere when he mentions time and eternity?

If Joseph Smith meant to say that God is God from all time past, to all of time in the future, in Moroni 8:18? Why did he write " unchangeable from Eternity to all Eternity" ?

Likewise -- Joseph Smith describes God as being from everlasting to everlasting.

Lectures on Faith Section 3

13 First, That he was God before the world was created, and the same God that he was, after it was created.

14 Secondly, That he is merciful, and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in goodness, and that he was so from everlasting, and will be to everlasting.

15 Thirdly, That he changes not, neither is there variableness with him; but that he is the same from everlasting to everlasting, being the same yesterday to-day and forever; and that his course is one eternal round, without variation.

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Actually, D&C 132 uses the term "eternal lives" to mean the cyclic nature of segments of time that just keep going (i.e. the "ages") in the "eternal round". So I don't really understand where the problem is theologically here. the word eternal or eternity just becomes the modern container for that concept. I would say the ages of the ages means the same type of thing, a cyclic repetitive nature of rhythmic time.

Vs 55 reads-- "...eternal lives in the eternal worlds."

I do not know if this means lives in the ages in the worlds of the coming ages or what?

Words are more than containers. If we are unsure of what a word means, then we are lost in trying to understand the meaning of a text.

If Joseph Smith did not mean eternity in a literal way (endless time/ or beyond all the realms of time) why did he use the word at all? Why didn't he just use the word 'time' or as you mention cyclic or rhythmic time like he did elsewhere when he mentions time and eternity?

If Joseph Smith meant to say that God is God from all time past, to all of time in the future, in Moroni 8:18? Why did he write " unchangeable from Eternity to all Eternity" ?

Likewise -- Joseph Smith describes God as being from everlasting to everlasting.

Lectures on Faith Section 3

13 First, That he was God before the world was created, and the same God that he was, after it was created.

14 Secondly, That he is merciful, and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in goodness, and that he was so from everlasting, and will be to everlasting.

15 Thirdly, That he changes not, neither is there variableness with him; but that he is the same from everlasting to everlasting, being the same yesterday to-day and forever; and that his course is one eternal round, without variation.

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Vs 55 reads-- "...eternal lives in the eternal worlds."

I do not know if this means lives in the ages in the worlds of the coming ages or what?

Words are more than containers. If we are unsure of what a word means, then we are lost in trying to understand the meaning of a text.

If Joseph Smith did not mean eternity in a literal way (endless time/ or beyond all the realms of time) why did he use the word at all? Why didn't he just use the word 'time' or as you mention cyclic or rhythmic time like he did elsewhere when he mentions time and eternity?

If Joseph Smith meant to say that God is God from all time past, to all of time in the future, in Moroni 8:18? Why did he write " unchangeable from Eternity to all Eternity" ?

Likewise -- Joseph Smith describes God as being from everlasting to everlasting.

Lectures on Faith Section 3

Joseph Smith's use of the words 'Eternal' and 'Eternity' and the phrase 'Time and Eternity' indicate that he at one point in his career was in agreement that God was a strictly and in an absolute sense always ETERNAL in nature in the role as God.

This entire argument is based on the premise that God the Father once wasn't a God. However, this is not taught in LDS theology. What is taught is that God was once a mortal man. Mortality and Godhood are not mutually exclusive. Jesus was a mortal man, but He was also a God. Considering the eternal nature of Spirits and the certainty and universality of the resurrection, the notion that God is God from everlasting to everlasting, and is unchangeable (at least in His attributes in which faith must be exercised) from all eternity to all eternity, is entirely in harmony with LDS scriptures and teachings.

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Hey all! A little help with tackling this please?

If only Joseph Smith had lived a little longer we'd have the "complete" theology. Right. So what's the problem with the successor "prophets, seers and revelators"? Why hasn't the rest of the theology been revealed since Joseph Smith died?

In fact, the KFD is not doctrine, no matter how many times it has been quoted as such. That "God has a body as tangible as man's, the Son also", got into the D&C seems to validate the rest of the KFD, but it does not. So there is no discrepancy as far as "scripture" (so designated for the Church) is concerned....

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This entire argument is based on the premise that God the Father once wasn't a God. However, this is not taught in LDS theology. What is taught is that God was once a mortal man. Mortality and Godhood are not mutually exclusive. Jesus was a mortal man, but He was also a God. Considering the eternal nature of Spirits and the certainty and universality of the resurrection, the notion that God is God from everlasting to everlasting, and is unchangeable (at least in His attributes in which faith must be exercised) from all eternity to all eternity, is entirely in harmony with LDS scriptures and teachings.

Sterling M. McMurrin

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