3DOP

Thank you, Pyreaux, for your thoughtful reply. My remarks about LDS and their teachings about suffering were based on an anecdotal experience at this board. Maybe you were not around for that discussion? But I happily yield to one better instructed in his own faith in finding that LDS also see reasons for suffering, as we do. I hope you get some "thumbs ups" from your fellow LDS. Perhaps I misinterpreted what I perceived as negativism about the subject? Hopefully, I can give a more in-depth reply later. Thanks again. All the best, Rory

You demonstrate some important distinctions while acknowledging some foundational agreement. I don't know enough about spirit prison to be critical about it. The opening post intrigued me for suggesting a Latter-day revelation that concurs with part of the Catholic interpretation of Col. 1:24, that Christ's suffering were in some sense wanting. It would suggest to us that Paul understood that there was more suffering for us to accept in this life. And remarkably it made him happy! I never knew of any Protestant Christians who would would admit that anything was lacking in Christ's suffering, until seeing the opening post on this thread, which of course is not Protestant, but LDS. I am glad that I know of at least one Latter-day Saint that agrees with us about that part of Col. 1:24. But I can't ignore our differences. I once got into a discussion about suffering here. If I recall correctly, I met with considerable resistance from the LDS when trying to explain that there is potential value in our own sufferings. I can't remember anyone who seemed drawn to the idea. So I am pretty sure that is another important distinction between LDS spirit prison and Catholic purgatory.

Hey longview. Catholics don't teach that babies, or anyone else who never gained enough use of reason to be guilty of actual sin, would ever be found in spirit prison/purgatory. "The place of torment", would not have any purpose except for those who committed actual sin. Regards, 3DOP

Hi telnetd, I hadn't heard the explanation of spirit prison. While not equivalent, as has been pointed out, it sounds remarkably similar in significant respects to the Catholic teaching about purgatory. You mentioned this passage in Doctrine and Covenants: 59 which "suggests that Christ's atonement alone does not exempt them from paying a personal penalty for their transgressions before being washed clean." Catholics understand Christ's atonement as having cleared all the debts for the eternal punishment of sin. No one but Christ could have done that. But there are temporal punishments that will still need to be paid in this life or the next (in purgatory). I am thinking of some companion verses from the New Testament that would also suggest what you propose regarding that verse 59 of D&C. Below, St. Paul is referring to how the Church teaches that God has willed that the faithful, by offering our prayers and sacrifices on behalf of our brothers and sisters who still live and for those who are in purgatory. But this life, even though Catholics like me don't think of it often enough as we should, is a purgatory too. Below St. Paul is seeing great value in his sufferings. That is why he rejoices about it. Like Christ, Paul knew that we are called to imitate Him in purging the sins of our companions, of what? Of the punishment that is still due and is "lacking", because it is God's will that we might joyfully suffer ourselves to pray, and merit for others with good works of charity that "covers a multitude of sins", according to one of St. Peter's letters. "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church" ---Col. 1:24 It is a beautiful teaching that can help us to see potential meaning in the many sufferings which we cannot escape anyway. Like Jesus, and with His help, we can bring good out of evil. With faith, our sufferings can actually make the holy saint very happy. I am not a holy saint. I rarely think to happily offer it up when having a little cough or the frustration of a broken refrigerator. It doesn't have to be terminal cancer! Maybe this post will prompt me to be more on the lookout for opportunities everyday to suffer well. There are two choices before us Catholics. We can suffer joyfully, recognizing a providential opportunity to lighten our own purgatory or someone else's. The other option is to see no meaning in the sufferings we endure, that gain nothing for anybody, not our loved ones, not our civil leaders, and not ourselves. It seems like a terrible condition. We can recognize that we are in this terrible condition when we find ourselves complaining inwardly or outwardly about what God allows to happen in our lives. Thank you, telnetd.

That's good of you Rain. I, not surprisingly, agree. God bless you.

Hmmm. I never knew. I am wondering if I am so ignorant that I should quit voting voluntarily and quit listening to outsiders who don't even have any idea how little I pay attention to what is called news, like Ice, and their maskers. It stopped abruptly, but I was blown away with text messages continuously reminding me to be voting until Tuesday. I obeyed them. They were also going HARD after someone called Joshua. I made some suggestions about how they might find him. I think he used to have my current phone#. Until recently it was always about some activity called vaping. Vaping is synonymous perhaps with voting? It was like the world was coming to an end if Joshua didn't vote/vape. Joshua must be very wise, but forgetful? They haven't got back to me about whether he voted/vaped or not. When I text back to find about whether they succeeded in persuading him to vote/vape they don't even reply. Kinda rude? Why do people want those like me who don't care much about voting/vaping to vote/vape? I only checked on a couple of the choices I made later. As almost always, I voted/vaped for the wrong side anyway. That's no fun. I voted/vaped for all these things and people that I didn't know about. I think there should be some kind of qualification that would eliminate people like me who don't pay attention unless I get hassled about it. And believe me, I have never been more hassled than this year. They should leave voting/vaping to people who actually care about those activities, and leave the rest of us who want to forget about them alone! I got this sticker as a prize for voting/vaping that used the old lingo. It said, "I voted." Back when I was young, I never knew about vaping/voting. Only voting. They are probably using up surplus stickers. Anyway, it was probably hoped that I would put it on my forehead like ashes on Ash Wednesday. I admit, I only put it on the steering wheel of my son's in-law car. (I voted/vaped in-between school runs for the grandchildren and they have so many kids we don't have a big enough car to take them all). I tried to scrape it off later, realizing that my son-in-law will find out I didn't put it on my head where it belongs.

When I said "You know." I didn't mean what the words say. There are expressions which are understood not necessarily according to the literal meaning. What I meant more literally was, "Hey y'know how some people seem to be slow at getting punchlines?" Words are hard. But its all we have to try to communicate. What do you think about the Word became flesh? I almost certainly miss a lot of the implications of that too. Anyway, ICE is probably easier. Let's try to understand that first.

Miserere. What does your reply mean? Can you explain its popularity to me? I am truly ignorant. Heh. You know. I don't get jokes. I get some. But often not. Was this a joke?

Incognitus, hey...good to see you. I am very much with you on wanting clarification on historical questions. Who killed Pres. Kennedy is one for my generation. It and everything else big and little will be disclosed. How? God knows. There will be a mechanism. Time is no problem. Study? My gut feeling is that it will be instantaneous to all. All the thoughts of all hearts will be revealed. Infused knowledge? The irrational animals have instincts that are remarkable even in this life. Does a spider go to school to "learn" to spin a web? But I have no doctrinal reason that I know of for denying that all humans, the just and the unjust, will need lecturing to be convinced that God is, has been, and always will, be good. But I tend not to envision courses of study. Study is a labor that allows failure or degrees of success. I think a big part of all this will be God's effective defense of the "problem of evil". Will those who disbelieve or disobey be required to study before they can see that God has been just and loving and merciful in all of his dealings with everybody and everything? I think everyone, just and unjust, will have an instantaneous vision of God's goodness, without taking classes. But we agree I think, that Heaven as well as "the Hot Place" would be amiss, if your last point, "most importantly", fails to show all to know the goodness of "lov[ing] the way God loves and recogniz[ing] the potential in everyone in the family of God and all of God's creations." I am biased in your favor, heh, but I think you are more Catholic than you might guess, InCog! God love you. Anyway, maybe I am more LDS than I know! I would be glad if both were so, along with those we go to church with. I hope we are much more on the same page than we have imagined.

I think I saw that my message box is full. That has never happened before, in 22 years! Thank you for two replies.

Hey thanks Navidad. I'll try to talk about things, and being. Another time though. Truthing? I don't think you mean a true thing? Reality....no...I stop. A blessed Sunday to you and Mrs. Navi.

I just saw this after another post to you. I am listening. But some revelation had already begun in the Old Testament, no? Are saying that truth simply IS? True truth? There are truths of nature and supernature that remain unrevealed, no? To be revealed or discovered in the future? I am not trying to assertive. I want to understand you rightly, but I fear our definitions of truth might not be the same. Could that be what is making my hesitant? Catholics say that truth is conformation of the mind with reality. That has been my working definition for a while. But I can't conform it to all reality like God. I can only have bits and pieces of it.

"Before Abraham was, I AM." The truth exists. We cannot own the truth like a possession. Can we conform our minds to things that are true, and have by faith a level of dark understanding about supernatural reality? I think you would grant that through the light of reason we can conform our minds to demonstrable truths about natural reality with much greater certainty, beyond a reasonable doubt, as they say in the courtroom? You have written a lot about this and have given it more thought than I have. I am interested to know if you find it problematic to understand truth in the way I have described? Maybe you could describe hour own relationship to certain truths as you understand them, could be corrupted into "having truth" rather than ____________truth. Maybe you could fill in the blank?

Hi longview and TheNehor. I can follow-up with a little more "clarity" longview. The Church has used imagery from the physical cosmos to symbolize the blessed just in eternity. Dante famously used this in his epic poem the Paradiso, while borrowing from other traditional sources. "And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever." (Dan 12:3) I would propose that the firmament is the whole collection of the stars that illuminate the night skies. This would be the glory of all the saints together as one hierarchical and harmonious, beautiful whole. But then there are the individual stars, uniquely special in their assigned place and glory, according to God's will. This is why I agree that there are degrees of glory in heaven as well as in the physical creation with which we are familiar. "But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, and another for fish." (I Cor. 15:39) Here again we see as well as with the verses that follow, a deliberate hierarchy in creation, which all announce God's glory. A fish is certainly a tremendous creation which sings a greater "song" to God than does unanimated matter. But everything God makes gives its praise to God, according to its capacity, to what the created thing is: "O ye fire and heat, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever. O ye cold and heat, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever. O ye dews and hoar frosts, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever. O ye frost and cold, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever. O ye ice and snow, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever." [Daniel 3:66-70] Back to Corinthians and the verse TheNehor was discussing with you longview: "There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies; but the glory of of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another." (I Cor. 15:40) Once again we see creation's hierarchy, with a sharp distinct between earthly and heavenly. I think no one would ascribe the praise of fire and heat, blessing or glorifying God, with that of the brute beast. A magnificent horse is a beautiful beast and surely praises God more in obedience to its own nature and capacity. But will fish and horse, or fire and heat be accounted as terrestrial or celestial? I propose that it is plausible to limit the celestial glories to the creature made in God's image. I fear that the Latter-day Saints are understandably focused with God's image as physical (because of all the flak you have to take about it), as to sometimes look past an even sharper distinction between man and the good animals. The animals made without powers of reasoning (an intellect) and loving (free will). I am not trying to convince the LDS of anything except that I wish you could appreciate a little better how the Catholic is filled with wonder at being made in a spiritual image of God. Will and intellect are invisible to the senses. What a responsibility for such a creature to choose to rationally love and obey and praise God? Unlike the always good (obedient to their natures) beasts, we have the potential for evil, to disobey our natures, but we can only do so through disobeying our reason and choosing. This is what the good beasts can never attain, the image of God in man, by our own powers of reasoning and loving. "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory." (I Co. 15:41) This is too long already. If anyone is curious, I will try to explain the plausibility for why one might hold that Jesus is the Sun, His Mother is the moon. and the wise, just, and redeemed will join them shining in the celestial glory of the stars. I do not think a Catholic has to accept this belief, so I certainly don't expect LDS to accept it. But the teaching is supremely beautiful to my beholding of it. Dante immortalizes it with loving poetical fire. According to Artificial Intelligence, Aquinas argues this position in his Commentary on I Corinthians. I would add that if AI is correct, Aquinas follows a respectable school of thought immortalizing a beautiful teaching with cool intellectual rigor. I just love the idea of the loving poet, and rational intellect, representing the two sides of our understanding of the image of God in us. It seems so fitting - coming round to magnify the same theological positions in two different ways! The will and the intellect. Love and reason, like mercy and justice, kissing in peace and harmony! Thanks for your consideration.

The intimacy of sharing? I think we all have probably experienced and enjoyed that. But I have never heard it expressed in such a plain way. It reminds me of a mysterious passage in the last book of the New Testament: "To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone, which no one knows except him who receives it." ---Rev. 2:17b It sounds like a secret that the just shares with our dear Lord alone. I like your idea a lot. It seems very fitting. Yeah. Nobody is going to be mind reading the new name that is given to the just, who conquers! It reminds me of a song from the 80's after my time. This band called Radiohead made a song called Creep. The singer had the saddest lament of any Psalmist or Jeremiah. He talks about the human desire to be "special". No one can claim that name except he or she who receives it. It is unique and perfectly fulfills the natural human desire to be special.