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WalkerW, on 20 September 2012 - 09:04 AM, said:
bump
Well this might be something that fits with this thread
http://opinionator.b...dit_ty_20120917
Quote
My topic was romanticism, and the argument kicked off from the idea that the extraordinary burst of creative energy that we associate with romantic poetry comes out of a disappointment with a religious, specifically Christian, worldview. Poetry becomes secular scripture. In other words, romantic art announces the death of God, an idea that catches fire in the later 19th century. It’s a familiar story.
Things went pretty well. But right at the end of the final lecture, something peculiar happened. A member of the audience asked me a question. He said, “What you have been telling us this week about romanticism and the death of God where religion becomes art is premised on a certain understanding of God, namely that God is unitary and infinite. Would you agree?” “Sure,” I said, “At least two of the predicates of the divinity are that he/she/it is unitary and infinite.” Gosh, I was smart back then. “But what if,” he went on, “God were plural and finite?”
Concealing my slight shock, I simply said “Pray, tell.” Everyone in the room laughed, somewhat knowingly. And with that the chairman closed the session. I went straight up to my questioner and pleaded, “Tell me more.” Thirty minutes later, over a caffeine-free Diet Coke in the university cafeteria, he explained what lay behind his question.
“You see,” my questioner said, “in his late sermons, Joseph Smith developed some really radical ideas. For a start, God did not create space and time, but is subject to them and therefore a finite being. The Mormon God is somewhat hedged in by the universe, and not master of it. The text to look at here is an amazing sermon called ‘King Follett,’ which was named after an elder who had just died and was delivered in Nauvoo, Ill., a few months before the prophet was murdered. He asks repeatedly, ‘What kind of being is God?’ And his reply is that God himself was once as we are now.”
He leaned in closer to me and continued in a lower voice,“If you were to see God right now, Smith says, right now, you would see a being just like you, the very form of a man. The great secret is that, through heroic effort and striving, God was a man who became exalted and now sits enthroned in the heavens. You see, God was not God from all eternity, but became God. Now, the flip side of this claim is that if God is an exalted man, then we, too, can become exalted. The prophet says to the company of the saints something like, ‘You have to learn how to be gods. You have to inherit the same power and glory as God and become exalted like him.’ Namely you can arrive at the station of God. One of our early leaders summarized the King Follett sermon with the words, ‘As man now is, God once was. As God now is, man may be.’ ”
“So, dear Simon,” my new friend concluded, “we, too, can become Gods, American Gods, no less.” He chuckled. I was astonished.....
Mormonism is properly and powerfully post-Christian, as Islam is post-Christian. Where Islam, which also has a prophet, claims the transcendence of God, Mormonism makes God radically immanent. Where Islam unifies all creatures under one mighty God to whom we must submit, Mormonism pluralizes divinity, making it an immanent, corporeal matter and making God a more fragile, hemmed-in and finite being. And obviously, both Islam and Mormonism have a complex relation to the practice of plural marriage.
Yet unlike Islam, for whom Muhammad is the last prophet, Mormonism allows for continuing revelation. In a way, it is very democratic, very American. Article 9 reads, “We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.” In principle, any male saint can add to the stock and neverending story of revelation and thereby become exalted. From the standpoint of Christianity, both Islam and Mormonism are heresies and — if one is genuine about one’s theology, and religion is not reduced to a set of banal moral platitudes — should be treated as such.
Like Bloom, I see Joseph Smith’s apostasy as strong poetry, a gloriously presumptive and delusional creation from the same climate as Whitman, if not enjoying quite the same air quality. Perhaps Mormonism is not so far from romanticism after all. To claim that it is simply Christian is to fail to grasp its theological, poetic and political audacity. It is much more than mere Christianity. Why are Mormons so keen to conceal their pearl of the greatest price? Why is no one really talking about this? In the context of you-know-who’s presidential bid, people appear to be endlessly talking about Mormonism, but its true theological challenge is entirely absent from the discussion.
Things went pretty well. But right at the end of the final lecture, something peculiar happened. A member of the audience asked me a question. He said, “What you have been telling us this week about romanticism and the death of God where religion becomes art is premised on a certain understanding of God, namely that God is unitary and infinite. Would you agree?” “Sure,” I said, “At least two of the predicates of the divinity are that he/she/it is unitary and infinite.” Gosh, I was smart back then. “But what if,” he went on, “God were plural and finite?”
Concealing my slight shock, I simply said “Pray, tell.” Everyone in the room laughed, somewhat knowingly. And with that the chairman closed the session. I went straight up to my questioner and pleaded, “Tell me more.” Thirty minutes later, over a caffeine-free Diet Coke in the university cafeteria, he explained what lay behind his question.
“You see,” my questioner said, “in his late sermons, Joseph Smith developed some really radical ideas. For a start, God did not create space and time, but is subject to them and therefore a finite being. The Mormon God is somewhat hedged in by the universe, and not master of it. The text to look at here is an amazing sermon called ‘King Follett,’ which was named after an elder who had just died and was delivered in Nauvoo, Ill., a few months before the prophet was murdered. He asks repeatedly, ‘What kind of being is God?’ And his reply is that God himself was once as we are now.”
He leaned in closer to me and continued in a lower voice,“If you were to see God right now, Smith says, right now, you would see a being just like you, the very form of a man. The great secret is that, through heroic effort and striving, God was a man who became exalted and now sits enthroned in the heavens. You see, God was not God from all eternity, but became God. Now, the flip side of this claim is that if God is an exalted man, then we, too, can become exalted. The prophet says to the company of the saints something like, ‘You have to learn how to be gods. You have to inherit the same power and glory as God and become exalted like him.’ Namely you can arrive at the station of God. One of our early leaders summarized the King Follett sermon with the words, ‘As man now is, God once was. As God now is, man may be.’ ”
“So, dear Simon,” my new friend concluded, “we, too, can become Gods, American Gods, no less.” He chuckled. I was astonished.....
Mormonism is properly and powerfully post-Christian, as Islam is post-Christian. Where Islam, which also has a prophet, claims the transcendence of God, Mormonism makes God radically immanent. Where Islam unifies all creatures under one mighty God to whom we must submit, Mormonism pluralizes divinity, making it an immanent, corporeal matter and making God a more fragile, hemmed-in and finite being. And obviously, both Islam and Mormonism have a complex relation to the practice of plural marriage.
Yet unlike Islam, for whom Muhammad is the last prophet, Mormonism allows for continuing revelation. In a way, it is very democratic, very American. Article 9 reads, “We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.” In principle, any male saint can add to the stock and neverending story of revelation and thereby become exalted. From the standpoint of Christianity, both Islam and Mormonism are heresies and — if one is genuine about one’s theology, and religion is not reduced to a set of banal moral platitudes — should be treated as such.
Like Bloom, I see Joseph Smith’s apostasy as strong poetry, a gloriously presumptive and delusional creation from the same climate as Whitman, if not enjoying quite the same air quality. Perhaps Mormonism is not so far from romanticism after all. To claim that it is simply Christian is to fail to grasp its theological, poetic and political audacity. It is much more than mere Christianity. Why are Mormons so keen to conceal their pearl of the greatest price? Why is no one really talking about this? In the context of you-know-who’s presidential bid, people appear to be endlessly talking about Mormonism, but its true theological challenge is entirely absent from the discussion.
Edited by mfbukowski, 20 September 2012 - 09:37 AM.
