Right, this is my understanding of the traditional Trinity doctrine as well. However, what I have never understood is, if this is the definition of "being"/"essence"/"nature", i.e. "whatness" (according to 3DOP), then how is the Trinity monotheistic using this definition? If Christ is consubstantial with us since He is fully human, which is analogous to Christ being consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Ghost, what makes three distinct divine Persons (who are not each other), who are of the same "stuff" (or of the same divine nature), monotheistic? To me, the Trinity does not seem any more monotheistic than the LDS Godhead doctrine, when we understand what those words are referring to in the traditional understanding.
I am glad to see your "bump" Christ Knight.
I agree. Consubstantiality alone can not account for the kind of unity in the Godhead that would make us any more rigorous in our monotheism than Mormons. That was my point in my opening post. I was waiting to see if Dave would answer since you addressed your question to him. In my opinion, properly understood, we are closer than people on both sides seem happy to admit. Consubstantiality should not be an issue.
I agree. Consubstantiality alone can not account for the kind of unity in the Godhead that would make us any more rigorous in our monotheism than Mormons. That was my point in my opening post. I was waiting to see if Dave would answer since you addressed your question to him. In my opinion, properly understood, we are closer than people on both sides seem happy to admit. Consubstantiality should not be an issue.
3DOP
I agree of course, but my earlier point was that if I am not mistaken, consubstantiality IS Catholic doctrine and was one of the philosophical reasons I left the church.
Maybe that point got muddled up in all my philosophical mumbo-jumbo! I think Dave was trying to make a kind of ordinary-language case for consubstantiality with his DNA analogy, if I understood him correctly, but I think he said he does not apply transubstantiation to the Eucharist.
Dave, do you consider yourself still a Catholic? That may be obvious to everyone but me, because I am not familiar with Dave really at all.
Edited by mfbukowski, 06 June 2012 - 05:41 PM.
"I see Religion as creating a language to speak of the divine and sacred. Since I see creating this language as a creative act, ... creating a certain view of heaven and earth, a living 'image' of God and Man and their story, past, present and future." - Calmoriah
"I see Religion as creating a language to speak of the divine and sacred. Since I see creating this language as a creative act, ... creating a certain view of heaven and earth, a living 'image' of God and Man and their story, past, present and future." - Calmoriah
It is in my second post where I suggest that there is another factor than consubstantiality upon which we may have serious disagreements and that probably account for a difference of degree in the rigor of our mutual monotheisms:
Quote
...the real problem is that we disagree on whether God is infinite being or not. Catholics hold that when God replied to Moses asking His name, the answer, "I am Who am", describes who God is. Pure existence as we understand it. This has ramifications that make the dynamic unity between God the Father and God the Son greater, infinitely greater, than that essential unity which exists between all biological creatures of the same species. I don't think I have ever even raised this real problem here at this board. This is in my opinion, the point of true disagreement between us. But we never get that far along.
If we could put consubstantiality behind us, it would seem to me to allow us to focus on our real differences while acknowledging that our systems of belief are more compatible than hardly anybody on either side seems to appreciate.
One further clarification- Stephen Davis is not Mormon, nor do I agree with him completely, the point I meant to make was that something like his position would be easily adaptable to Mormonism
"I see Religion as creating a language to speak of the divine and sacred. Since I see creating this language as a creative act, ... creating a certain view of heaven and earth, a living 'image' of God and Man and their story, past, present and future." - Calmoriah
If we could put consubstantiality behind us, it would seem to me to allow us to focus on our real differences while acknowledging that our systems of belief are more compatible than hardly anybody on either side seems to appreciate.
I couldn't agree more- my only point is that is an uphill battle. More like wall than a hill as I see it!
But I can see that in the future, with an infinite number of discussions like this one, sensum fidei could triumph. http://en.wikipedia....Sensus_fidelium
But I think I'll stay Mormon, even if that changes. There are a few other things I kind of like too!
Edited by mfbukowski, 06 June 2012 - 05:52 PM.
"I see Religion as creating a language to speak of the divine and sacred. Since I see creating this language as a creative act, ... creating a certain view of heaven and earth, a living 'image' of God and Man and their story, past, present and future." - Calmoriah
I think that one of the reasons for the development of this concept is Jesus' own words that he will do nothing except that which he has seen the Father do. How can Jesus follow in the steps of the Father unless the Father did what the Son was doing and will do?
I think that LDS tend to read too much into that. The context of that verse give some ideas of the kind of things it might mean:
John 5:
17 But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. 18 Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God. 19 Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. 20 For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. 21 For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. 22 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:
I don't think it can be read into that that God was once a man like us or like Jesus, and then became God.
The fundamental difference between Mormonism and classical theism, of which Catholicism is a part, is that in classical theism, God is the ground of all being. In Mormonism, God is not the ground of all being. That's where the fun begins.
If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose my beliefs are true ... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. - J. B. S. Haldane
The fundamental difference between Mormonism and classical theism, of which Catholicism is a part, is that in classical theism, God is the ground of all being. In Mormonism, God is not the ground of all being. That's where the fun begins.
I think that LDS tend to read too much into that. The context of that verse give some ideas of the kind of things it might mean:
John 5:
17 But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. 18 Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God. 19 Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. 20 For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. 21 For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. 22 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:
I don't think it can be read into that that God was once a man like us or like Jesus, and then became God.
I don't think that the Father was ever a man like us; we are entities in which his work will be fulfilled i.e. he strives to make it possible for us to become like him through his Son. I do think it is possible that the Father may have had an existence like the Son. It is problematic, but not inconceivable. I do not undestand why it would be necessary or why he would have done it, but I don't completely rule it out. Further, the section has no limitations other than to say the Son does nothing that he has not already seen the Father do. This seems very far encompassing when it is acknowledged that Jesus was on earth and the Father was in heaven.
For me the Godhead is, has been, and will always be an eternal presence, unit, the Godhead. They are as eternally God as the word eternal can mean. I do not recognize a time when the Father was not God and the Son was not the Son. The Gohead is the defining foundation upon which all creation rests and exists; without it, we do not exist.
Storm Rider
“When from Thy stern tutoring, I would quickly flee, turn me from my Tarshish to where is best for me. Help me in my Nineveh to serve with love and truth; not on a hillside posted, mid shade of gourd or booth. When my modest suffering seems so vexing, wrong, and sore, may I recall what freely flowed from each and every pore. Dear Lord of the Abba Cry, Help me in my duress to endure it well enough and to say, . . . 'Nevertheless.'” - Neal A. Maxwell
>> Surely you do not mean that the words "substance" and "DNA" are interchangeable - I feel I understand what you are saying, I know what the term "substance" means here- you are saying that in some way humans are "one" in a way which excludes apes, and of course I would agree, but obviously you are not intending to say that there is some "thing" called "substance" which is different for humans than apes. Yes, DNA is certainly one of the things which separates us (or unifies, on the other side) but these differences and similarities- perhaps hairiness, ability to climb, intelligence, use of language etc are not themselves all definable by the word "substance">>
Me: "Substance" is being used as an equivelant of essence/nature/species/et al., while a DNA test is one of the ways one can identify the attributes that distinguishes humans from anything else.
>> For me, "substance" is not anything ontological at all, it is a noun which in English means a kind of material with no particular meaning except as a kind of placeholder for the adjective which precedes it. So a "greasy substance" is not at all similar to a "rocky substance" because they are both "substances"- nor can one turn into the other. The word "substance" for me is a synonym for "material". So in this context if we are to say that the Father and Son are one "material"- THAT makes sense to me, and that "material" is human flesh. In that sense, in Mormon theology, I am also made of the same material as the Father and Son. You can call it "substance" if you like as long as we are on the same page as to what that means to me.>>
Me: Very interesting, have never heard "substance", in either philosophical or theological dialogues, being used as such. For me, I always try to make reference to the original Greek terms that were being used in the Scriptures and early Church Fathers when discussing English terms such as being, essence, nature, person, substance, etc.
>> I certainly agree with Drake, but frankly I am always surprised that the "filioque" is something still being argued. I think he gets it totally right, but find it ironic that he ends up discussing that the mediator must have both a divine and human nature and be both "consubstantial" with God and man.
To me, this is the confusion that this whole misunderstanding of the words "substance" and "nature" lead to. It is really Platonism in action- because we use the adjective "red", a Platonist would tell you that there must be some kind of "abstract thing" or "form" or "Idea" of "Redness" which exists independently of the particular instance of a red car, let's say. To me, of course, that is nonsense.>>
Me: I think Drake has jettinsoned Plato's notion of 'forms'/'ideas'/'archtypes', and instead rests his argument on Scriptural terms—more specifically, the terms theos (God) and anthrōpos (man).
>> The Mormon solution, which I think fits well with the views of philosophers like William James and Wittgenstein, is that yes, of course for God to interact with humans, he MUST be of the same "material" as humans (you can read "substance" if you really want to!), and so we just define both the Father and the Son AS indeed "human". And of course we are indeed materialists in the sense of believing that spirit and matter are the same, on a continuum of being more or less "refined". So indeed, the way I see it, we are materialists, and that spirit is matter, we just have very very poor science which doesn't know that yet.>>
Me: This is where 'traditional' Mormon theology gets 'fuzzy' for me, and this for a number of reasons that would take pages to delineate. But, most importantly, "the Son", Jesus Christ, before his "condencension" (as the BoM puts it), was fully God, "the Eternal God", "one God" with the Father and Holy Ghost; and this, without a body of "flesh and bone". Further, whatever "spirit" is, it is not matter (i.e. not composed of any of the elements of the periodic chart/table); one can call it 'finer material', but it is not matter.
Have you read Blake Ostler's contrubutions on theology proper? The following essay is a very good starting point (IMHO):
So much more to add, but my time is very limited right now (have guests from California staying until Sunday). Hopefully later, I will be able to contribute more...
Grace and peace,
David
Worst of all, the Book of Mormon bears such alarming resemblance to scripture that, for Meinhold, it not only undermines but threatens in a spirit of "nihilistic skepticism" to discredit the Bible altogether. Since one can reject the Book of Mormon without in any way jeopardizing one's faith in the Bible, and since no one ever can accept or ever has accepted the Book of Mormon without complete and unreserved belief in the Bible, the theory that the Book of Mormon is a fiendish attempt to undermine faith in the Bible is an argument of sheer desperation. Recently Professor Albright has noted that the Bible is first and last a historical document, and that of all the religions of the world, only Judaeo-Christianity can be said to have a completely "historical orientation." - Hugh Nibley
Saw your "bump!", so with what little 'free' time I have yet, I would like to briefly respond to the following you posted:
>>Right, this is my understanding of the traditional Trinity doctrine as well. However, what I have never understood is, if this is the definition of "being"/"essence"/"nature", i.e. "whatness" (according to 3DOP), then how is the Trinity monotheistic using this definition? If Christ is consubstantial with us since He is fully human, which is analogous to Christ being consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Ghost, what makes three distinct divine Persons (who are not each other), who are of the same "stuff" (or of the same divine nature), monotheistic? To me, the Trinity does not seem any more monotheistic than the LDS Godhead doctrine, when we understand what those words are referring to in the traditional understanding.>>
IMHO, the term "monotheism", is one of the most misunderstood terms I can think of. As you know, it simply means: "one God". The difficulty in defining "monotheism" stems from the fact that the term "God" (elohim, theos) has more than meaning/sense in the Scriptures. Because my time is limited right now, forgive for suggessting the following threads where I share a few of my reflections on this issue:
After my guests leave (Sunday), I will have much more time to spend on internet dialogue...
Grace and peace,
David
Worst of all, the Book of Mormon bears such alarming resemblance to scripture that, for Meinhold, it not only undermines but threatens in a spirit of "nihilistic skepticism" to discredit the Bible altogether. Since one can reject the Book of Mormon without in any way jeopardizing one's faith in the Bible, and since no one ever can accept or ever has accepted the Book of Mormon without complete and unreserved belief in the Bible, the theory that the Book of Mormon is a fiendish attempt to undermine faith in the Bible is an argument of sheer desperation. Recently Professor Albright has noted that the Bible is first and last a historical document, and that of all the religions of the world, only Judaeo-Christianity can be said to have a completely "historical orientation." - Hugh Nibley
IMHO, the term "monotheism", is one of the most misunderstood terms I can think of. As you know, it simply means: "one God". The difficulty in defining "monotheism" stems from the fact that the term "God" (elohim, theos) has more than meaning/sense in the Scriptures.
This is exactly precisely the entire problem here. You could pick any one of these words like essence, nature, necessary, contingent, monotheism, omnipotent, and yes, even "God"- I could go on and on with the list- but the point is that these words are so ambiguous and vague as to be virtually meaningless when torn from a context which makes them useful.
In my opinion, most of these disagreements come precisely from linguistic misunderstandings, and THAT is the value of a linguistically analytic approach.
You string together a few of these ambiguous words in an ambiguous context like "The Divine Nature of God, at it's essence, is Love", and to me you get a statement which is about as understandable as the statement "God is love", which, through scriptural, doesn't clarify much. Now of course though we get to try to figure out what the restatement is trying to say, and ultimately not getting any farther.
My point is that most of theology is like this, and does not use the possibilities inherent in an analytical approach. I am not sure why that is- the only conclusion I can reach is that most in Mormon theology have not been trained in it or at least don't use it.
"I see Religion as creating a language to speak of the divine and sacred. Since I see creating this language as a creative act, ... creating a certain view of heaven and earth, a living 'image' of God and Man and their story, past, present and future." - Calmoriah
Does any other Christian church teach that Jesus was the literal Son of God besides the LDS Church?
I would say yes, but we don't believe that Jesus is the literal son of Heavenly Mother or that Jesus has other
brothers [and/or sisters] prior to his procreation (i.e. the children that Heavenly Father and Mother had prior
to them becoming Gods).
Very interesting, have never heard "substance", in either philosophical or theological dialogues, being used as such. For me, I always try to make reference to the original Greek terms that were being used in the Scriptures and early Church Fathers when discussing English terms such as being, essence, nature, person, substance, etc.
The reason I defined it that way was to kind of underline that I think that we cannot really discuss what that word meant to those using it- yes of course we have dictionaries and we might speak ancient Greek, but the social milieu has changed so much that I am sure we are engaged in some level of presentism no matter how much of a Greek scholar we are. Also I was trying to make a point by using a methodology of more contemporary linguistic analytical philosophy to kind of shock the discussion into the direction I wanted to take it rather than adhering to the usual theological usage. My point is that the usual theological usage is NOT the way that 21st century English speakers generally use the term.
Quote
This is where 'traditional' Mormon theology gets 'fuzzy' for me, and this for a number of reasons that would take pages to delineate. But, most importantly, "the Son", Jesus Christ, before his "condencension" (as the BoM puts it), was fully God, "the Eternal God", "one God" with the Father and Holy Ghost; and this, without a body of "flesh and bone". Further, whatever "spirit" is, it is not matter (i.e. not composed of any of the elements of the periodic chart/table); one can call it 'finer material', but it is not matter.
Well in a way you might be right, but I think perhaps what we are discussing here are fields including ways in which different types of matter interact with each other. I really don't think we are close to having the physics we need to define these terms, but Joseph was doing the best he could with the vocabulary he had. http://en.wikipedia....damental_forces
I think perhaps "spirit" might ultimately be defined in these terms, but I could be wrong. I really have no reason to think I am wrong at this point
Quote
Have you read Blake Ostler's contrubutions on theology proper? The following essay is a very good starting point (IMHO):
Well yes and no. I frankly have problems with his approach- I certainly agree with him on many things, not all, but I think perhaps he gets a bit bogged down in older philosophical paradigms, but perhaps that is the way he feels he needs to communicate in order to be relevant as a "theologian".
I think he has some truly profound insights about the nature of the "translation" of the Book of Mormon and the nature of Mormon doctrine as perhaps totally disappearing in "orthopraxis" but I think frankly he immerses himself too much in the paradigms of the past, and ignoring what has been going on in philosophy for at least 150 years or so.
I could be wrong about that, but I don't think he could argue the way he does in this essay without me being right about that. I kind of get bogged down in his methodology and end up ignoring his strengths when I start reading him
Since Nietzsche, philosophy has gone off in a different direction than the kind of Theology being discussed here, including the kind that Ostler does, at least in so far as I have read his work. It is quite possible I have missed something, but for me, reading these theologians who worry about "divine nature" and "substance" are hard for me to relate to, frankly. I am not suggesting that contemporary philosophy is necessarily “right”, but I don't think ignoring it is exactly a wise strategy for theists- it appears then that we don't have adequate arguments for or against it.
For example, from the article you linked to above, Ostler says: (I have added underlining)
Quote
2. The Mormon scriptures consistently present a view of three persons who are one God in virtue of a unity so profound that they are one and in each other. God is the relationship of intimate and inter-penetrating love in this sense. However, 'God' is ambiguous as to whether it refers to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as individuals or to them as a collective. To avoid confusion, I will adopt the convention of using the term Godhead to refer to the divine persons collectively. By 'divinity' I mean the fulness of the relationship of indwelling love among the Father, Son and Holy Ghost which gives rise to the emergent divine nature and in virtue of which these three are one God. By 'divine nature' I mean the set of properties essential to be divine. To put it less exactly, divinity is what makes a divine person divine.
If you look logically at what is being said here, it really doesn't tell us much at all. He is attempting to define "divine" and yet he uses the word in the definition itself of "divine". That is like saying that sleeping pills work because they cause people to sleep. There's not much information there.
In fact, let me repeat that underlined portion, taking out the word divine, and substituting a nonsense word for it and see if you can guess the meaning of the nonsense word.
By 'hoobaloo' I mean the fulness of the relationship of indwelling love among the Father, Son and Holy Ghost which gives rise to the emergent hoobaloo nature and in virtue of which these three are one God. By 'hoobaloo nature' I mean the set of properties essential to be hoobaloo. To put it less exactly, hoobalooness is what makes a hoobaloo person hoobaloo .
Now I don't mean to single out Ostler here, because most of these conversations about essence and nature and all of that seem about the same to me.
Yet we theists, while keeping our heads in the sand arguing about "divine nature" are facing very real threats from atheists and others who see these buzzwords as just that, and we typically have no answers for them. You see that all the time here on this forum where the theists really do not have good arguments against those atheists with a positivistic bent, who demand that science for example, is what defines what is "real".
Richard Rorty, for example, is one of the most important philsophers of the 20th century. He is usually seen as an atheist, though he is arguably a borderline agnostic.
About two hundred years ago, the idea that A truth was made rather than found began to take hold of the imagination of Europe. The French Revolution had shown that the whole vocabulary of social relations, and the whole spectrum of social institutions, could be replaced almost overnight. This inspired a new sort of politics – revolutionary, utopian politics, the sort of political thought which sets aside questions about both the will of God and the nature of man and dreams of creating a new kind of human being. Simultaneously, the Romantic poets were showing what can happen when art is no longer thought of as imitation, but rather as self-creation. These poets made it plausible for art to claim the place in culture traditionally held by religion and philosophy, the place which the Enlightenment had claimed for science.
In the course of the last two centuries, these two tendencies have joined forces and have achieved cultural hegemony. For the contemporary intellectual, questions of ends as opposed to means – questions about how to give a sense to one’s own life or that of one’s community – are questions for art, politics, or both, rather than for religion, philosophy, or science. This development has led to a split within philosophy. Some philosophers have remained faithful to the Enlightenment, and have continued to identify themselves with the cause of science. They see the old struggle between religion and science as continuing, having now taken the form of a struggle between reason and all those forces within culture which take truth to be made rather than found. These philosophers take science as the paradigmatic human activity, and think of science as discovering truth rather than making it. They regard ‘making truth’ as a merely metaphorical, and thoroughly misleading, phrase. They think of politics and art as spheres in which the notion of ‘truth’ is out of place. Other philosophers, realising that the world as it is described by the physical sciences teaches no moral lesson, offers no spiritual comfort, have concluded that science is no more than the handmaiden of technology. These philosophers have ranged themselves alongside the political utopian and the innovative artist. Whereas the first kind of philosopher (a kind common in Britain and America, and exemplified by even such relatively liberated analytic philosophers as Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams) contrasts ‘hard scientific fact’ with ‘the subjective’ or with ‘metaphor’, the second kind – common elsewhere in the world – sees science as one more human activity, not as the place at which human beings encounter a ‘hard’, non-human reality. On this view, great scientists invent descriptions of the world which are useful for purposes of predicting and controlling what happens, just as poets and political thinkers invent other descriptions of it for other purposes. But there is no sense in which any of these descriptions is an accurate representation of the way the world is in itself. These philosophers regard the very idea of such a representation as pointless.
Had the first sort of philosopher, the sort whose hero is the natural scientist, always been the only sort, we should probably never have had an autonomous discipline called ‘philosophy’ – a discipline as distinct from the sciences as it is from theology or from the arts. As such a discipline, philosophy is no more than two hundred years old. It owes its existence to attempts by the German idealists to put the sciences in their place, and to give a clear sense to the vague idea that human beings make truth rather than finding it. Kant wanted to consign science to the realm of second-rate truth – truth about a phenomenal world. Hegel wanted to think of natural science as a description of spirit not yet fully conscious of its own spiritual nature, and thus to elevate the sort of truth offered by the poet and the political revolutionary to first-rate status.
I highly recommend the rest of the article- at least the portion which is available without a fee.
The paradigm shift that we need to make here is that when we speak about what we call “things” we are always speaking in words- which are symbols for things, not things themselves. Truth is a property of propositions and sentences, not a property of “reality”. We need to understand that in speaking about alleged “things” like the word “substance” we CANNOT speak about some kind of “actual” substance- we can only speak about SPEAKING ABOUT SUBSTANCE. And if we think otherwise, we are just kidding ourselves.
It is impossible for humans to break out of human thought when thinking. And the minute we try to “express our thoughts”- guess what? We need language to do that. We can never break out of language. For all practical purposes, the way we speak about things IS the way they are.
So the bottom line here for me is that there are bigger philosophical issues here than worrying about philosophical scholasticism, or the nature (definition) of “substance” or “divinity” which has arguably been going over the same ground for the last 800 years.
Theism itself has been attacked, and in my opinion, we need to respond or consign theism to the graveyard of quaint old traditions.
In short, I think we need a new kind of theism which can speak to the issues being raised now, instead of arguing about the same debates like the nature of “substance” which we have been having, unresolved, for 800 years.
If the postmodernists and other who think that linguistic issues are the only thing that is important, shouldn't we at least look at their arguments and see why they are snickering and pointing behind our backs?
So I agree with Ostler on the social trinity as the way to understand the unity of God, even if I think I would argue his case differently. I think also the paradigm he is using forces him into other positons which are probably ultimately untenable, but this thread is not about Ostler's strengths and weaknesses, though that might itself be an interesting thread, or article.
Edited by mfbukowski, 09 June 2012 - 01:45 PM.
"I see Religion as creating a language to speak of the divine and sacred. Since I see creating this language as a creative act, ... creating a certain view of heaven and earth, a living 'image' of God and Man and their story, past, present and future." - Calmoriah
I would say yes, but we don't believe that Jesus is the literal son of Heavenly Mother or that Jesus has other
brothers [and/or sisters] prior to his procreation (i.e. the children that Heavenly Father and Mother had prior
to them becoming Gods).
Regards,
Jim
We don't believe that either. We believe Jesus is the Firstborn.
Edited by altersteve, 09 June 2012 - 06:36 PM.
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." —Mahatma Ghandi
Maybe this is a better way to explain my point. The older theologians think that they are describing things as they are, and God as he is.
But the newer philosophers and theologians I think are aware that whatever they come up with is really just a conceptual model - a way that humans think about, describe, and speak about reality.
So it really ultimately all comes down to hermeneutics - interpretations of language. That is what our ideas about scripture are- interpretations of very old probably semi-legendary material written by humans like us in languages far removed from our present understandings. Were they inspired? Of course- God spoke to those people as much as he speaks to us today- but those revelations were for those people and their time.
We need our own conceptual models that fit with our needs today.
Words like "substance" end up becoming so charged with tradition and jargon, when you look at what is actually just being said, linguistically, without appealing to a thousand years of tradition becomes pretty meaningless.
And since the only way we can understand reality is by creating conceptual models which help us interpret the world around us, creating those models is in a sense creating reality (as we understand it) itself.
So I think that the Mormon scriptural idea that a human God "organizes" the world can be seen both in a literal way, but also as a representation- a conceptual model- of how humans ourselves "organize" our own worlds by organizing conceptual models.
And this a short explanation also of what guys like Rorty are talking about when they say that self-creation is the creation of new worlds.
The problem was that Rorty could not conceive of the idea that there could be a human God- neither could Nietzsche. The God they think died was the old sectarian God of "substance" and "essence"; the new God being born was the human God restored by revelations to Joseph Smith, the God who is immanent rather than transcendent, who is our Father, and is a glorified human who organizes worlds as all humans do.
I see this as literally true, but one could see it just as well as a metaphor for what humans do in organizing worlds through conceptual models. We define things into existence, turning "matter unorganized" into a cohesive theory which works in our interactions with the universe.
So science and religion really have the same task- the creation of cohesive conceptual models which effectively do what they are constructed to do. Science teaches us how physical things work, religion teaches us how to give meaning to our lives.
"I see Religion as creating a language to speak of the divine and sacred. Since I see creating this language as a creative act, ... creating a certain view of heaven and earth, a living 'image' of God and Man and their story, past, present and future." - Calmoriah
I don't blame you at all for feeling the Trinity is dizzing and even confusing. I agree.
Our difference would be that I believe that is how things work and you believe otherwise. In specific on the topic, I think the thing that convolutes understanding is our view of time more than anything else.
The LDS paradigm seems to point to a regressive and progressive eternal sequence of events and God is being that is always "in time", so to speak.
My thought is that time is a product of God and God is beyond time... so from my own view for me to say Jesus has always been the Son of God means something different I expect than what an LDS might mean. We might both find agreement in the notion that roughly 2,000 years ago Jesus became actualized as the only begotten Son of God.
From my own view, what happened was the actualizing of what has always been where the LDS view might be more like the actualizing of what was planned but has yet to occur.
"Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." - Mr. Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose my beliefs are true ... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. - J. B. S. Haldane
I don't blame you at all for feeling the Trinity is dizzing and even confusing. I agree.
Our difference would be that I believe that is how things work and you believe otherwise. In specific on the topic, I think the thing that convolutes understanding is our view of time more than anything else.
The LDS paradigm seems to point to a regressive and progressive eternal sequence of events and God is being that is always "in time", so to speak.
My thought is that time is a product of God and God is beyond time... so from my own view for me to say Jesus has always been the Son of God means something different I expect than what an LDS might mean. We might both find agreement in the notion that roughly 2,000 years ago Jesus became actualized as the only begotten Son of God.
From my own view, what happened was the actualizing of what has always been where the LDS view might be more like the actualizing of what was planned but has yet to occur.
I suspect that as long as language is used there will always be differences in thought. I guess at the end of the day the differences that may exist between our beliefs that Jesus has always been the Son of God become meaningless. These differences all pale beside the acknowledgment that Jesus is the Son of God, that he was born of the virgin Mary, lived a perfect life, was crucified, rose the third day, sits on the right hand of god, and will one day return again. When two are more believe thusly, there will be found the Spirit; what doctrine is more important?
Storm Rider
“When from Thy stern tutoring, I would quickly flee, turn me from my Tarshish to where is best for me. Help me in my Nineveh to serve with love and truth; not on a hillside posted, mid shade of gourd or booth. When my modest suffering seems so vexing, wrong, and sore, may I recall what freely flowed from each and every pore. Dear Lord of the Abba Cry, Help me in my duress to endure it well enough and to say, . . . 'Nevertheless.'” - Neal A. Maxwell
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ChristKnight, on 04 June 2012 - 09:21 PM, said:
