3DOP

No worries OC. No offence. But I don't think his singular beliefs had such a long lasting effect. Us Latins rejected his babies burning for not being baptized more than a millennium ago. But we did hold on to a primary end of marriage that you mention for much longer. Did you guys have a secondary or co-primary end earlier, as we do now? I don't mind a bit if you are ahead of us. I want us back together, and that would show our holdouts that we needed you. Do you not think you need us? Not at all?

THANK augustine? It is obvious you know how to capitalize. So you guys don't venerate St. Augustine? Is it because of his views on sex? Has the Eastern Church always taught two principal ends of marriage?

Benjamin I think that there is something transcendent in the idea of a God who suffers our suffering, who shares our grief, who feels our pain - so that He can fully express the mercy that we need. And the theology here that He experiences it according to the flesh: not as a transcendent God, but as a mortal man. There is the repeated emphasis here that it is the man Jesus who must experience all of this. Rory Some LDS are uncomfortable with God's transcendence. My Catholic God is certainly "too transcendent". "If God is transcendent it means He does not hear your prayers." I have been told that here. I believe in a transcendent God, before I am Catholic or anything but a theist, with or without any hellenizing philosophy. As a Christian, before I am Catholic, He is close by. "In Him we live and move and have our being" (St. Paul in Athens) God is far off. Transcendent. And God is within. Immanent. Transcendent God made Himself, in the person of His Son, Emmanuel! God with us. Immanent. God claims to be both according to Catholic dogma. Perhaps not so clearly yet for LDS. But you appear to be free to think about it? Do we have to choose between one or the other? Must it be Transcendence or Immanence? Don't we want it all? God doesn't give His creatures desires that cannot be met. Higher animals like my beloved cat aren't worried about eternal life or transcendence or immanence. My Whitey is in bliss when I give her some extra stuff she likes called Temptations if she cleans up her bowl. But man is not so easily transported to heights of joy. We want the greatest God imaginable to comfort and care for us. Creaturely desire seems like a sign of something put into us from beyond us. Anyway, that is my hope.

Hi halconero. I like your new look in a jacket and tie! Probably not that new. I forget what you used to look like, and don't intend any criticism of what I can't remember. That is a lot to think about. You know about the Old Covenant a lot more than me. Anyway, I am pretty sure I like it. In any event...we agree that we don't have to think that Christ's suffering was only about penal justice? The idea I am promoting here is old, but somewhat new to me. I think that it makes God more approachable. Not that He is unapproachable if it is all about justice. But if it is to show HIs affection for us, and we get that He is doing EVERYTHING to make us meet His approach? I won't say He becomes irresistible although I want to say that. With free will we can always resist.

Philip Schaff compiled a three volume work called the The Creeds of Christendom. The third volume is titled as "The Creeds of the Protestant and Evangelical Churches". Between 1523 and 1932, I count around 60 separate creeds from the Table of Contents, which are mostly drawn up when communities split but sometimes when they reunite. There is no commentary which means that up to 1932 there are 960 pages of Protestant creeds contained in this book. I don't think this detracts much from your post, but I doubt that the LDS get there attitude toward creeds from the Protestants. When the Lord is said to have told Jos. Smith that "all their creeds are an abomination", Joseph was living in an area with very little Catholic presence. I tend to think he thought the Lord was talking about all of the Protestants who were in his immediate neighborhood. It seems to me then from what follows that paragraph, that from your point of view, the Latter-day Saint would be as free as a Catholic to consider the possibility that the afflictions of mind and body that our Lord endured in His Passion were more than what was necessary to satisfy God's justice. I mainly like to propose this idea because of how it has been a blessing to me to think, as Orthodox Christian says below (or I guess above after this posts), that it is all because our great God loves us and will do anything that is moral and that does not violate our free will, to unite Himself ever more to us, even to the point that Orthodox Christian made, of theosis. And He wants us not for His sake. God is not unhappy without us! But we are unhappy without Him, and He knows us better than we know ourselves. If we think our hearts are full of bliss and peace without Him, we do not know ourselves. We are made to desire what only God can give us. Himself. The Word became flesh because our "abstract hellenistic God" (Hi teddy.) wants and initiates an intimate relationship with each of us! No big deal about the creeds, Rory

Hi bluebell, I have at least three speculative reasons about why it was the will of God that the Son (whose will was the same) should make an Atonement for man that was "exceeding the debt (so to speak)." The first I will explain is the reason that I return to again and again. I have touched on this before at this website and I remembered an LDS participant who seemed to hate the idea that the Lord should suffer any more than the absolute minimum to gain the result of "equalling the debt", or "paying the price". I don't remember the nomenclature. But when, as I recall, no one else opined on the subject, I concluded that this was probably the common belief among LDS. I readily admit that such a small "sample" is inadequate to make any judgment on what is common among you. So all of the replies I have received for now seem to be in favor of the common belief among Catholic theologians, but with conclusions that can only be considered as free opinion. I will not make the mistake of thinking that silence is acquiescence this time. I welcome any LDS participants to offer any evidence for why this subject should not be in the area of free opinion. (Benjamin gives some interesting thoughts for why LDS would have problems with being too dogmatic about it.) Reason #1 The Incarnate Word is upon the earth in order to offer a Sacrifice, and the Sacrifice is begun to-day. The first shedding of the Blood of the Man-God was sufficient to the fulness and perfection of a Sacrifice; but he is come to win the heart of the sinner and that heart is so hard that all the streams of that Precious Blood, which flow from the Cross on Calvary, will scarcely make it yield. The drops that were shed to-day would have been enough to satisfy the justice of the Eternal Father, but not to cure man's miseries, and the Babe's Heart would not be satisfied to leave us uncured. He came for man's sake, and his love for man will go to what looks like excess--he will carry out the whole meaning of his dear name--he will be our 'Jesus,' our Saviour. ---The Liturgical Year, Dom Prosper Gueranger, Vol. 2, p. 384, Republished by St. Bonaventure Publications, July 2000, (entry for the Feast of the Circumcision) Our author did not cite the theological reason why one drop of blood was enough to satisfy justice. Most commentators hold that it was because Jesus was and is the Man-God. As man He was united to us. As God, He was united with the Father and the Spirit, and so any sacrifice had an infinite value because of this status. But again, theology like this isn't what Gueranger is aiming at. The point is that not one human soul is exempt from being greatly beloved beyond all of our imaginations by God who was willing to leave heaven to be circumcised. But that is not all. For our sakes, who are made to return unfathomable love in our creaturely way, and who cannot be satisfied with creaturely goods alone, God goes to further excess as our Divine Lover. In another place, we see Gueranger use the word reckless to describe God's demonstration of love which is intended to melt our icy hearts. Latter-day Saints in this forum have been very eloquent in showing that they have been touched by the passion and death of Christ through meditating in their mind's eye, on His suffering. I will close for now by suggesting that many LDS and Protestants clearly help themselves in this way to take steps to deepen their love, obedience, and devotion to their Lord Jesus. Highly commendable and not to be criticised. But there are Catholic Saints, who are not necessarily literate, who have still learned their faith through a "book". That book is the Cross of Calvary, with Christ suspended on it. Why must they be limited to using only their mind's eye of the events of our faith? The Catholic Church knows how difficult it is for Her children to meditate and sweetly contemplate upon all the mysteries of the faith, and so She encourages through art and music, visible and audible aids to our devotion. The rising sight and smell of sweet incense reminds us how our prayers of faith ascend heavenward when we unite with the Church's liturgy. Rather than through words alone, She gives us sensible signs of our faith adapted to our human condition. It isn't because we stupidly magnify an instrument of murder, as I have heard. That is truly ignorant rhetoric. LDS and Protestants mostly view the Saviour through their mind's eye, and are to be admired for so doing. But Catholics see no idolatry in putting before the faithful reverent, beautiful, and modest renderings of events for the eyes and ears of our human bodies to help us even more to contemplate in a concrete and human way, the mysteries of our faith, the center of which is the Holy Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross.

Very interesting CV. I like that idea of liberation and "the bank". I hope to return to the same idea when I would try to put forward three reasons why Christ would make superabundant atonement. (I would be surprised if there are only three) Thanks for your reply.

I think we can be relieved to see that CV75 misread Teddy's "...speculations that might be entertained..." as a different kind of entertainment than a careful reading would entertain! Heh.

Great...no wrath then but strictly justice...the wrath part might have been coming from my former evangelicalism. I don't think I have nearly exhausted the mystery about why God would want to exceed the debt. In fact, nothing in this would be original with me. But I return again and again to at least one idea that I will share later since you ask. Probably tomorrow after more remarks come through. It is going to in the 70's this afternoon, and I have to get out and do some winterizing this afternoon (ugh). And I was also reminded I need to vote (ugh. I used to vote by mail in Washington. But in Kansas you have to send in a request every time and I didn't think of it.)

In the thread which began as whether Christ in His humanity would have had a defective reproductive system, Benjamin McGuire wrote an incisive reply to one of my posts that deserves its own thread I think. Benjamin wrote: Mosiah 15 does it's best to differentiate between the two natures of Jesus and to point to the fact that it is the fully human nature of Jesus that allows for intercession to be made. To a God, there is no real suffering, there is no real temptation. To say that Jesus suffers in the capacity of His divine nature is to say that he suffered a trivial thing. And Mosiah 15 presents a view of atonement which I suspect is not all that different from @3DOP's, as well as a view of the nature of Jesus that isn't too far off (Mosiah 15 is quite similar in a way to Chalcedon's Statement of Faith). I would be pleased if Mosiah 15 is compatible with the view of @3DOP on the Atonement. From discussions that I have had in the past, most LDS here seem to take a position which I think mirrors Evangelical thought, that Christ had to suffer all that He did in order to appease God's wrath and to make reparation or atone for all of our sins. At the outset, I admit that this used to be my view of the matter. I was an Evangelical for almost twenty years and a minister for seven years. As a Catholic, I retained that view of the Atonement when I converted in 1995 to the Catholic faith. That idea of the Atonement is compatible with the Catholic faith. But so is the view, which is undefined for us, which I have come to adopt. I want to be clear that the view that I am going to suggest as being the most fitting is only one of at least two schools of thoughts that is permissible for the Catholic faithful if I understand the matter correctly. Anyway, I would be pleased as I said, to discover that among LDS also, different schools of thought might be considered permissible so that there might be more open-mindedness on the LDS side as I try to explain my position. I did not come to my conclusions from a systematic manual kind of study, but rather ascetical/devotional material that was trying to rouse in the reader a deeper love and affection for our Lord and Saviour. Manuals of systemic theology are good in their place. But we are also in need of something to make our hearts go pitter-pat. Summas Theologica are not written in such a way as to do that, in my opinion, for the ordinary Christian, who is just trying to be close to God and learn to pray. St. Thomas takes us to the land of pitter-pat with his beautiful hymns about the Eucharist. Shoot, I think I even heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Panis Angelicus once! I am not dismissing the immense value that St. Thomas and others have given to the faithful in their systematic theologies. And to prove this point, I am going to use such a theological text to show that my more recently adopted view, that makes my heart glow more readily, might also be possible within both the LDS (Mosiah 15?) and Catholic faiths. When Holy Scripture designates Christ's precious blood, or the giving up of His life, as a ransom-price for our sins, the basic thought is that the atonement offered is of equal value to the guilt of the sins. Yes. I think many Catholics and LDS would agree. Then we read: Christ's Vicarious Atonement is superabundant, that is, the positive value of the expiation is greater than the negative value of the sin. (Sent. communis.) The bolded above is a bolded subheading in the treatise. The Latin words in the parenthesis has to do with the grade of certainty with which Catholics can at this time regard the teaching. It will mean that it is clearly not defined. There is room for discussion. it is explained here: Common teaching (sententia communis) is doctrine, which in itself belongs to the field of free opinions, but which is accepted by theologians generally. I include one quote under the subheading that might explain how this "free opinion" can be understood: Pope Clement VI declared in the Jubilee Bull "Unigenitus Dei filius" of the year 1343, that Christ had shed His blood copiously, as it were, in streams, even though one little drop of blood, on account of the Hypostatic union with the Logos, would have sufficed for the Redemption of the whole human race. ---Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott, 4th Edition May 1960, Tan Books and Publishers, Rockford, IL, pp. 188, 189 (grade of certainty concept on p. 10) So instead of an assumption that many Catholics can correctly hold, that Christ was appeasing the wrath of His Almighty Father, Catholics may ponder why it could have been the will of the Father and the Son to exceed what was judicially adequate to redeem a fallen race through the Son's passion and death. My question for my LDS friends here is about whether like us Catholics, the Latter-day Saint faithful have the freedom to ponder this question? Or is the question settled by dogmatic LDS teaching? Thanks, 3DOP

Fair enough. In a mystical sense I would agree that Christ identified with all human suffering. But he did not experience all human suffering. I would draw that distinction. He never had to wait for hours trying to get through customs before missing a connecting flight at the airport. I rejoice that He is one of us. It makes me happy when I ponder it. (I regularly forget to ponder it.) I don't need for Him to have experienced sufferings that were not possible during the age in which He lived as a man.

Hi longview. We are getting a little bit away from the thread topic. But only a little. I am not trying to diminish the suffering Jesus endured on our behalf during His passion. Am I doing that when I say that Christ might not have had a kidney stone, and certainly didn't experience childbirth as some of us have had to do? But we who identify with Jesus on the Cross, are invited to "take up our crosses, and follow Him." Our "crosses" may involve being ignored or mocked. It might be having kidney stones. It might be childbirth, or being cut off in traffic and missing our exit because of no fault of our own. None of us will be given a Cross we are unable to bear just as Jesus bore His. Will we yield to anger, pity, or hatred when our crosses appear? When we obediently accept with patience the sufferings that God allows us to experience, we are taking up our crosses and following our good Lord. Jesus exercised all of the virtue without any of the vices that can be prompted by human suffering. Jesus was committed as man to be humbly obedient to God. Jesus was committed as Son to be humbly obedient to His Father. As men and women having the same humanity as Jesus Christ we carry our Crosses in the same fashion, for the same reasons. Jesus is trying to make us have courage to perform heroic acts of self-sacrifice for the sake of the love of the Father, who gave us His only Son, and who accepts us as His children. It seems important that Jesus suffered for us not only to pay a debt, but to give us an example to follow, every day. No day is without such an opportunity to deny ourselves as He denied Himself supremely, in our own often small ways. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteousness." (Romans 5:19, my emphasis)

But manol...in this case, no one, including Jesus, has suffered every single way of affliction that anyone has ever suffered. Surely, the intention of that Scripture is to say that Jesus was subject to potentially experience every kind of affliction that is common to both sexes? In Genesis, it is revealed that pain child bearing is unique to mothers. If a man suffered all the pains of child birth or even some of the discomforts mothers experience in nursing. It would be most unnatural. There are many ways to die. But Jesus didn't experience all of them. It seems more reasonable to hold that the Scripture you cite was saying that greatest and most universal of human afflictions, death, was certainly shared by our Lord. He surely experienced lesser afflictions of the body. Was the author of the passage you cited saying that Jesus necessarily had the mumps, a kidney stone, and multiple sclerosis? No way. Had he lived longer He would have experienced some, not all, of the ordinary age related health problems associated with our advancing date with mortality. Being non LDS, I would never suggest that the passage you cited was false because there was one or more kinds of suffering that the Lord Jesus didn't experience. He had suffering in his mind, body, and spirit. If I were LDS I would understand that those are some of the "kinds" of affliction that Christ endured as one who was fully human. There are a few kinds of affliction, and many specific ways of suffering that fall into different kinds, or categories if you will. I would suggest that is a more fit interpretation of "all kinds of affliction". He suffered all the kinds, but not all the ways of suffering.

Hey cal, He could have been injured and not healed. If he lost a finger in an accident, like all humans, it would not naturally grow back. Like all humans, God could perform a miracle of healing on Him. But His being like us would ordinarily exclude that kind of healing. If Jesus was physically incapable of losing a finger permanently, He would not have been "perfectly human".

When he scraped his knee, his blood clotted like ours would. He needed antibodies, like us, to heal and ward off common illnesses. Being perfectly like us means susceptibility to the physical, mental, and spiritual challenges that all of humans have in general. Nobody suffers every kind of affliction possible. That would not be perfectly human either. But He was susceptible. Humans do not have attributes that we admire in animals. Being two-legged we are given to losing our balance much more easily than the four legged animals. If Jesus had the balance of a cat while only having two legs, he would not have been perfectly human. I hope that is helpful in trying to explain what I think Chalcedon was trying to teach when it uses the expression "perfect in humanity."

Yes. Perfectly human. With all the infirmities that afflict all humans. Yes. It doesn't mean a superhuman. A normal, healthy human with afflictions that all humans of either sex can experience. It does not mean that during life he never suffered defects. We all have the potential to lose an eye or a limb. To be able to suffer that loss is part of what it means to be perfectly human.

Did you mean to ask about the possibility of His infertility? The presumption is that He was fully healthy, with all of His human parts working. As I said above, I have never heard of anyone denying the Lord's reproductive capacity, but maybe some Christians do. Catholic and Orthodox Christians adhere to the First Seven Ecumenical councils. The Council of Chalcedon spoke definitively about Christ's human nature in 451 A.D. in response to a movement to try to diminish the humanity of Christ. "...we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except for sin;" If there was a question about Christ being sterile, Catholics and Orthodox, would need to modify the definitive statement above to read "...like us in all respects except for sin and a faulty reproductive system." The whole point is that Christ is 100% human, except he is sinless. But for those who agree with Chalcedon, it says "perfect in humanity". The Lord Jesus had everything humans ordinarily have. He had all the parts and they were healthy parts. Perfectly human. The next century would see further attacks on Christ's human perfection, saying that He lacked a human will. That idea needed a council to settle the matter too. Admittedly, we do not have a Council to say specifically that Christ's sexual organs worked. But it seems to be inferred from what I have quoted. in the 6th Century, I could have seen the reasonableness of suggesting that Jesus could only have one will, and that it would be according to His divinity. But how easy it would be to obey the Father with only the same will as the Father. No. How could we imitate Him if He lacked a human will? No. He came to teach us how to live as fully human to conform our wills with God's will, as He did. To live a life of chastity, as He did, with all of the same natural urges, temptations, illnesses, hunger, weariness, and any other difficulty that can cause us to stumble. He prayed like us too. He shows us how to to offer up our bodies, a living sacrifice, our reasonable service. (Rom 12:1 and 2) He is our perfect Captain and Brother who has experienced everything that we have experienced, except for sin. We should already love Him for all of that. And then comes Gethsemane and beyond! What a glorious and beneficent Saviour. Praise Him. Rory

Infertility.

I cannot think of any Christian community that teaches that the Lord had such a human defect.

By the way...and maybe this is cleared up already. I need to read the rest of the thread. I figured that Ft. Luke Hanson was just a typo for Fr. (Father) Luke Hanson. Fort Luke Hanson? No big deal...but what else does "Ft." stand for?

I am late to this thread. I watched the whole video tonight in October. A thought or two...I liked the serene and thoughtful presentation. Hi cal. Dave Waltz doesn't look at this site much anymore (nor do I, I might point him to it. We talk.). But both of us think there is a lot of value in comparing Islamic and LDS and Catholic claims together. I am uncomfortable with comparisons to be characterized as ridiculous. There are significant ways in which we are closer to Islam. Creation ex nihilo is big, I have seen a lot of posts on this forum which characterize that as ridiculous. To be fair, I wonder if that fuels some of the apparent Catholic favortism towards Islam. I am at odds with what most devout Catholics think the Catholic Church teaches, for accepting every baptism that uses the correct form (the form is the words used) except for the LDS. Why be confident that my Baptist baptism from a man who would vehemently deny that a Catholic should accept it? (There are some good arguments). I am conditionally baptised, but think my original baptism was probably valid. I would suggest that these norms should also apply to LDS baptisms. I hold that more non-Catholics should be conditionally baptised upon being received into the Church. Lutherans and Anglicans and Presbyterians aure. But most Catholics, incliuding the hierarchy seem pretty ignorant of the wacky stuff that is taught in some Evangelical circles. Still, we can't repeat baptism. So I say the same for LDS. To say that every LDS baptism seems difficult to support. I am glad to be conditionally baptised. But I would hesiatate to say I was never baptised. It seems like I would feel the same way as an LDS. I share my intellectual journey with hardly any living person except Dave. In the 90's, after our conversions, our kids and my wife would make remarks about "Daddy's Church", whenever we would pass an LDS....I don't even know what you call it, a Stake? It was a good joke. Anyway, one of your red brick buildings. Most of my fellow Catholics would think my interest in Islam in the early 90's coupled with an interest in your own faith would be ridiculous. I put out feelers rarely. I have one friend here in Kansas, a young fellow Catholic, under 40, who sees why I would have ever taken the LDS claims seriously. I think we need to be patient with our fellow religionists regarding their ignorance of other faith claims. I think very few of your fellow LDS are well-informed about Catholic thought. As I approach my "golden years", I have a little bit of envy toward my fellows who have never seemed called to wrestle with the issues that separate us. All the camps have good people who try to follow Christ, and who adore, and praise, and thank Him, even while being ignorant of the nuances of other ways of Christian beliefs. God save us and make us One in Him, as He prayed. Rory

Agreed Pyreaux. There seems to be an assumption on Christ's part that we have enemies, human enemies. For instance, by being politically liberal, I will have enemies. By being politically conservative, I will have enemies. An enemy is anyone who has ill will towards me. Our challenge, if we would love our enemies as the Lord instructs us, does not necessarily involve having great affection for them, but to wish them well. I know that I have been guilty of being glad when someone for whom I had an aversion, stumbled and fell, for example. I was unloving, unChristlike. I was his enemy at that point. He may never have been aware of it. If we would love our enemies, or those we don't like because they are constantly talking about murders and economic disaster, or other depressing news, we need to avoid malice towards them. It is very hard to feel affection towards them, and I have no guilt about having aversion to such persons. But if everyone is my brother or sister through Christ's coming in the flesh, uniting Himself with each of us, as my faith teaches, I must love them. To love only means to want the best for them for Christ's sake, which is to say for TRUTH'S sake. By God's grace we can love those who are naturally repulsive to us (for what might be good reasons), and especially if we detect that they have actual malice towards us. God tests us and tries to perfect us by placing these kinds of people in our lives. God is pleased when we wish well to those who treat us well. But He asks us for something more which does not come naturally. I do not believe I am capable of it on my own. I need help to do that which is beyond my nature. I need my faith and God's grace to be able to make real in my mind and will that He is only asking us to behave towards others, how He has behaved towards us. He wishes the best for everyone! That is the ultimate test of our Christian faith. What will we do or wish for those who make us disgusted, or hurt us and our loved ones? This is what it means to be perfect, because God is perfect. God is love.