Institute For Religious Research Study Guide Challenge Redux

[altersteve]

Here’s a reference to our Heavenly Mother. It also shows that the Gods are of both the male and female sexes, since we, men and women, are in Their images.

In the heav’ns are parents single? No! The thought makes reason stare!

Lehi

God the Father specifically says that when He said "us," He was talking to Christ: "And I, God, said unto mine Only Begotten, which was with me from the beginning: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and it was so" (Moses 2:26). The "us" and "our" here clearly refer to the Father and the Son, not Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.

How about that. There's no reference to Heavenly Mother in the Book of Mormon, but you found one in the Bible, in Genesis 1:26, that eluded Jews and Christians for thousands of years.

Some LDS scholars believe that there may be some hints about Heavenly Mother in the Book of Mormon. For example, see this article by Dan Peterson:

http://maxwellinstit...=9&num=2&id=223

And now, a question for you, however uncomfortable it might be to you:

Why does the Book of Mormon call Jesus Christ "the Father of heaven and earth" (Mosiah 3:8; 15:4; Alma 11:39; Helaman 14:12; 16:18)?

I know this question wasn't directed at me, but it's not uncomfortable at all. Christ is "the Father of heaven and earth" because, as Mosiah 3:8 and Helaman 14:12 tell us, He is "the Creator of all things from the beginning." Also pay attention to Mosiah 15:2-3, which explains how Christ is both the Father and the Son in another sense. We believe that any term that can be used to describe the Father can be used to describe the Son as well, and that Christ can be called "Father" because of the very same reasons that you listed yourself, especially #3. Contrary to popular belief, we do believe in becoming "born again" as sons and daughters of Christ (even though we don't use that terminology), and He is thus our Father in almost every way God the Father is.

Edited February 7, 2012 by altersteve

[LeSellers]

Why does the Book of Mormon call Jesus Christ "the Father of heaven and earth" (Mosiah 3:8; 15:4; Alma 11:39; Helaman 14:12; 16:18)?

Because He did the actual work of creating them. Just a George Washington is the Father of our country, Jesus is the Father, or creator, of the heavens and the Earth.

Now, to avoid your misusing this explanation to say that God is our Creator and thus our Father in a metaphocial way, like Washington or Christ to the heavens and the earth, I point out that Jesus made an express parallel between us and Him when He told Mary to go tell the Apostles that He had ascended to "[His] Father and [ours]". There is also the fact that God is at least as fluent in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek as I am in English, so when He calls Himself our Father, and Jesus His Son, we must assume He is being literal (unless there is a very good reason to see it as metaphorical, and there isn't here). Among the 300,000 words in the English language, surely there is one that would express the idea of His relationship to us that is better suited than "Father" if, indeed, He were not our Father, as He tells us.

Lehi

Edited February 7, 2012 by LeSellers

[LeSellers]

God the Father specifically says that when He said "us," He was talking to Christ: "And I, God, said unto mine Only Begotten, which was with me from the beginning: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and it was so" (Moses 2:26). The "us" and "our" here clearly refer to the Father and the Son, not Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.

Not so clearly as you seem to imagine.

Jesus was a central Figure in the creation, to be sure. But so was our Mother in Heaven, even if She did not (an assumption here on most all of our parts) did not participate directly in the creation. She was a necessary Element of that creation nonetheless, since She is our Mother

Further, "our" in this passage does not exclude Her even if She was not there at the time. Father could very easily have said "let us create man in our image" meaning in the image of the Family, He for the men, and She for the women, even while talking to Jesus. I do similar things in speech all the time, and I'm sure everyone else here does, as well.

Lehi

[altersteve]

Not so clearly as you seem to imagine.

Jesus was a central Figure in the creation, to be sure. But so was our Mother in Heaven, even if She did not (an assumption here on most all of our parts) did not participate directly in the creation. She was a necessary Element of that creation nonetheless, since She is our Mother

Further, "our" in this passage does not exclude Her even if She was not there at the time. Father could very easily have said "let us create man in our image" meaning in the image of the Family, He for the men, and She for the women, even while talking to Jesus. I do similar things in speech all the time, and I'm sure everyone else here does, as well.

Lehi

Okay, I see what you're saying, and I agree. Thanks for clarifying.

[Loran Blood]

First of all, Loran, the LDS scriptures not only “do not contain any clear reference to Heavenly Mother,” they do not contain any reference to her at all. Let’s put that fact on the table so that we are dealing with the full reality.

Second, the LDS “open, developing canon” is irrelevant, because Heavenly Mother is not mentioned in any of the standard works, i.e., she is not mentioned even in the LDS open, developing, expanding canon. Now, if you mean to use the term canon to include statements not in the standard works, please make that clear. The standard usage of the term is in reference to the writings viewed by a particular religion as scripture.

The concept of an open, developing canon is hardly irrelevant for the simply reason that anything that comes throught the principle of revelation and is set to the printed page is scripture, and if it has broad application to the entire church, and is accepted as such by the Brethren, it becomes scripture for the church and doctrinal. You do not seem to recognize, after all your years "studying" the LDS church, that all of our "scripture" and all of our doctrine are not contained within the four standard works at any given time. So again, it is your mention of the absense of Heavenly Mother in the four standard works that is irrelevant to LDS theological claims, not LDS concepts of "canon."

Third, while it may not matter to many Mormons that its expanded canon never mentions Heavenly Mother, it is a peculiar omission, as I point out in the article. Does this prove, from the LDS point of view, that she doesn’t exist? No, and I didn’t claim otherwise. But the omission is strange.

If one understands LDS theology, its not peculiar at all. The gospel develops "line upon line, precept upon precept," and "here a little, there a little," and hence, "omissions," such as this, far from being in any way odd, are exactly what we would expect under the dispensational basis of any restoration of the gospel. Seeing the mention of Heavenly Mother as somehow odd because it came later in the Restoration is a bit like being confused by the fact that the Priesthood was not revealed until the doctrines of the Church had already been developing and its mission already in progress. What was taught by Christ to his disciples during his post-resurrection forty day ministry? Why was all that knowledge "omitted" earlier? Why are there so many books in the NT canon written over decades? This implies that much was "omitted" in the earlier decades of the 1st Century that had to be filled in in the later decades, all the way to the beginning of the 2nd. Why? Why didn't Jesus comission one big gospel principles manual at the outset?

It is also strange that Joseph Smith never mentioned her in any of his other many sermons and speeches.

Again, is this "stange" from within an LDS perspective or an evangelical Protestant perspective? None of our Temple ceremonies are mentioned anywhere in our scriptures. And? LDS theology itself already comprehends this state of affairs and explains it as a part of the incremental development of the teachings of the Restoriation over time, through living prophets, by the power of revelation as given by the Holy Spirit in an open, unfolding corpus of scripture and gospel knowledge. Further, you might well ask why the strong differences in narrative, in some salient areas, between the synoptic gospels? Early Christian communites who had the work of Matthew, but not Mark, Luke, or John, and any combination of the above, did not have key information mentioned in the other texts (most saliently regarding some aspects of the passion and crucifixion of Christ). Why the "omissions" of certain key elements by one writer that is then picked up later by another?

The openness of the canon in LDS thought is irrelevant, as explained above,

since despite its openness no reference to Heavenly Mother has yet been added to the LDS canon in the 167 years since Eliza Snow first articulated the idea.

This appears to be a non-sequitor. I see no logical connection between the openess of the canon, the concept of Heavenly Mother, and the lack of additional material on her since Joseph's day. One could just as well ask Rob why Paul didn't expand anywhere else on his cryptic passing remark regarding baptism for the dead, or why the equally cryptic and vague ideas represented by Peter regarding Christ's visit to the underworld during the time between his death and resurrection, were not later fleshed out in more explicit detail. From an EV standpoint, Rob detects strange omissions and lacuna. From an LDS standpoint, I seem to detect straw grasping arguments that don't cohere very well logically.

Personal revelation is also irrelevant because the issue is the idea of a Heavenly Mother as a church doctrine, not as a personal belief. Thus, the doctrine’s authority as church doctrine rests on its promulgation by the LDS Church under the direction of the General Authorities. Does that work for Mormons? Yes, and I never said otherwise. But that fact does not remove the oddity of the lack of any mention of the idea in the large corpus of the LDS standard works.

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here. Since revelation qua revelation is the foundation of the entire Church and its religious truth claims, its a bit opaque to me how this central principle could be irrelevant to the idea of Heavenly Mother. Eliza Snow may have been the first to receive such an insight, but, as has already been pointed out above by DaddyG, this revealed insight has since been confirmed by a number of prophets, and is now embedded as a key principle within the Proclamation on the Family. Nothing in church doctrine states that any specific doctrine must originate with the General Authorities. Most may, but the idea that a member of the church, like Eliza Snow, in penning sacred music to be used by the Saints in worship and meditation, could not be, in that capacity, inspired to introduce something new, which is then accepted and sustained by the Brethren, is hardly outside the boundaries of LDS theology. True, we as individual members cannot publically teach things that go beyond what has already been revealed, as we have no mantel or authority to do so, but this in no way precludes personal revelation on any number of things exceeding present Church doctrine. If one were to take something to the Brethren, and they were to sustain it, this would be in keeping with priesthood governance and order.

In my article, I had stated:

I’m afraid you are creating an illusion of me as ignorant of such claims by sheer speculation. Nothing I said in the article implies that Mormons don’t try to explain away the lack of scriptural support for this doctrine in the ways you suggest.

Well, I caught this one, Rob, and I can’t let it pass. We are arguing for our position, not trying to “explain it away.” I might just as well point out your years of “explaining away” the problem of the utter lack of biblical support for the doctrine of the Trinity, but that would just be what you’re doing here: planting a preemptive suggestion that LDS are desperately struggling to close gaps in their theological history or understanding. The fact is, we don’t perceive things that way at all. The concept of Heavenly Mother is nothing, in any way, bizarre or unbalanced when placed within the larger doctrine of the literal fatherhood of God and the concept of eternal family. Heavenly Mother fits, indeed, naturally and easily into a very obvious open space left invitingly by the very doctrine of the literal fatherhood of God itself.

The case that I present against the idea has an inner coherence and evidential strength even if Mormons like you can think of ways to rationalize the problems away.

I don’t agree at all. You’re entire criticism is grounded in assumptions regarding the meaning and purpose of revelation and the nature of scripture that are centered in evangelical Christian conceptions, not in LDS. Its one thing for you not to believe them, and show reasons why this is the case, but quite another to claim that your arguments claiming that LDS themselves should be skeptical of them because of perceptions of the process in which the idea originated, grounded in evangelical theological assumptions, have “inner coherence” and “evidential strength.” This begs criticism of its own because, as mentioned before, you do not seem to grasp the way in which LDS themselves understand revelation and the nature of scripture.

If you’re going to critique my argument, you need to follow the argument as a whole, rather than chop it up to make individual statements in my article into unrelated sound bites that you can then criticize for failing to be single knock-out punches, which I don’t claim any one of them to be.

Following the argument as a whole is fine, but philosophical rigor demands that each argument, claim, or use of language be looked at for its evidential and conceptual strength in detail. Each argument is part of a body of extended argument that makes up the “argument as a whole,” and the whole argument may very well not be the sum of its parts. That has to be looked at in a careful, point-counterpoint way. Many whole arguments collapse at the outset once fallacies in the initial premises or statements are exposed and made clear.

This won’t be of any real help, as you seem to realize, since you drop it as quickly as you mention it. Those ancient Israelites who believed in a “consort” for God thought of her as a consort of Yahweh, and they worshiped her—and on both points Mormonism must firmly distance itself from them. There are all sorts of problems with Barker’s revisionist theories, but this isn’t the place to start hashing out those issues. I will simply say this: the Book of Mormon seems to have had the idea “washed out” as well, if the supposed authors of the Book of Mormon ever had any idea of her existence. This is why, as you probably know, Mormon apologists got so excited when Dan Peterson claimed to find a vestige of the idea in Nephi’s vision. And that is the very best anyone has been able to do to try to find some trace of the idea in the Book of Mormon. Presumably we cannot blame Deuteronomist redactors for the lack of any direct reference to Heavenly Mother in the Book of Mormon. Nor will such an explanation account for the lack of any such mention in the Book of Abraham or the Book of Moses or the rest of the JST. So that particular explanation for the lack of reference to Heavenly Mother in the Bible is not at all helpful.

The ancient Israelites, at all appearances, had a distinctly anthropomorphic view of God, including a heavenly consort, a kind of "second in command" (as Barker has shown vestiges of a "Great Angel" concept) and a heavenly society of angels of various kinds and with various powers and authority (the New Testament’s depiction of angels, such as those who rolled away the stone of the tomb, follow LDS doctrine exactly. They are physical, and they appear indistinguishable from human beings (it was "men" who rolled away the stone and spoke to the apostles). There's a mountain of suggestive evidence out there, but I dropped it only because it was peripheral to the thread, not because it's not substantive evidence. At the very best, Heavenly Mother is rather peripheral to the plan of salvation itself as directly relevant to us, in mortality. We worship God, the Father, in the name of Christ, and Christ is the Savior and Redeemer of humankind. If you will recall, we teach that this is the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times, in which much knowledge had by Saints in the distant past will be restored and connected to knowledge with neither they or we presently have. The Book of Mormon peoples may or may not have known the doctrine, but within LDS theology, this hardly makes any difference, as, according to LDS doctrine, there’s still a great deal all of us don't know, and yet, according to LDS doctrine, that hasn't kept anyone out of the Celestial Kingdom if they were willing to keep the commandments as revealed and "endure to the end."

You have been wondering aloud if I understand how my objections to the doctrine of a Heavenly Mother sound to informed Mormons. Well, I must wonder if you understand how your comments about its absence from scripture sound to non-Mormons.

No, I’ve been wondering why you continue to covertly invoke evangelical theological categories and concepts when asking Mormons to look analytically at their own doctrines. Why should we, after all, think like an evangelical Protestant when looking at potential quandaries within our own teachings? I’ve done this many times, but not because I’m concerned that the Church isn’t, or may not be true, but because quandaries and problems in theological/philosophical matters call up in me a desire to struggle, understand, resolve (if possible), and know.

It doesn’t matter…but maybe she was mentioned in Israelite scriptures before they were doctored…and it looks like she is mentioned in a Gnostic text that didn’t make it into the New Testament…. These sorts of rationalizations may work for intellectual Mormons, but from an outsider’s perspective they seem rather desperate.

To an evangelical Christian outsider, this is doubtless the case. To someone else not steeped in that worldview, a mind may be very much more open to the possibilities.

Apparently, God in your religion has absolutely no control over what makes it into scripture and what doesn’t. He completely lost control of the Old Testament, the canon of the New Testament is missing a lot of good stuff and what remains is suspect in both transmission and translation,

Now, these are old counter-cult canards, Rob, which I remember dealing with when I was much, much younger and in much better shape. By our own doctrine, if God had “lost complete control” over the scriptures, we probably wouldn’t have them at all. Human beings lost control over them, and God preserved them, but not in such a fashion as to make it easy to recover them. Remember, the Great Apostasy was a mass human rejection of the original gospel, and God, holding sacred our free agency, was in no position to force those scriptures on anyone.

According to this same logic, Rob, it would appear, given the story of the temptations of Adam and Eve and the Fall, that, in point of fact, God lost control of his entire creation at the outset. You’re leading yourself, I think, into box canyons with arguments such as you are making here.

No. The problem is not merely that the Book of Mormon calls Adam and Eve our parents, but that it calls them our “first parents,” and does so repeatedly without any qualification and without ever speaking of heavenly parents.

This is yet another example of both the importation of evangelical assumptions into the philosophical nuts and bolts of this argument, and a fallacy of logical relevance. Once and for all, LDS do not look at their scriptures in the way EVs look at theirs. We do not see the Book of Mormon (or the Bible) as the once-and-for-all, sole, closed, final, and permanently sealed revelation of the mind and will of the Lord. The Book of Mormon (and the Bible) mention numerous words spoken by its prophets, and any number of other texts and witnesses that are not, themselves, contained in the scriptural book one has in one’s hands. The fact that the Book of Mormon doesn’t mention x, but the D&C does, or a prophet does in a conference talk, or something new shows up in an official proclamation, is, for us, the normal state of affairs. For you, it appears as a breach of cosmic protocol of some kind.

Secondly, the form of the argument you are using here (if the scriptures don't mention something, of don't qualify every statement they make by explicitly accepting or rejecting every possible implication or expansion of a concept, then it follows that the thing not mentioned

must not be true, or cannot be true) is logically flat. If I say such and such is the case, and if you point out that the Bible or Book of Mormon don't say such and such is the case, you have shown precisely the following: the Bible and the Book of Mormon do not say that such and such is the case. You have not shown that such and such is not actually the case. Its one thing, from a logical perspective to show that somthing couldn't be true because it is in obvous contradiction to or inconsistent with something the scriptures say, and quite another to point to the absence of a concept in the scriptures as evidence that the concept is false, as if a positive assertion about the relevance or truth of the concept somehow followed from the absense of the concept in the scriptural text.

I'll have to break this up for brevity, as I'm well aware that long, long posts many times get skipped over.

Edited February 7, 2012 by Loran Blood

[wenglund]

Symbolism is often used in the scriptures, particularly of ancient Eastern origin, to hide mysteries in plain sight. This is so that those with eyes to see, can see, and those who don't, won't.

In another thread Kevin Christensen reminded me of other ways we may be blinded to the mysteries hidden in plain sight. Kevin said:

Joseph Smith explained the problem with creeds, while pointing out that "all of them contain some truth."

"creeds set up stakes, and say, "Hitherto thou shalt come, and no further'; which I cannot subscribe to." (TPJS, 327.)

"The most prominent difference in sentiment between the Latter-day Saints and sectarians was, that the latter were all circumscribed by some particular creed, which deprived its members [of] the privilege of believing anything not contained therein, whereas the Latter-day Saints have no creed, but are ready to believe all true principles that exist, as they are made manifest from time to time. (HC 5:215.)

He also explained that "It dont [sic] prove that a man is not a good man, because he errs in doctrine"; see Ehat and Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith, 183-84.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[KevinG]

Daddy,

You asked:

I've already answered this question. Sorry, DaddyG, but you're just not listening to me.

Please elucidate - the responsibility to commnicate clearly is reciprical with author and reader. I do not see where you answered the question without elevating the level of an LDS commentary reference to that of Prophetic teachings. A serious error when claiming expertise in Mormonism.

[KevinG]

dup

Edited February 7, 2012 by DaddyG

[KevinG]

I have no patience today for having my position twisted.

Then perhaps you will use those feelings and gain some empathy as to the LDS objections to your "presentation" of Mormonism.

[KevinG]

I observe that after several rounds of this challenge we are still hearing from Rob that the misunderstandings of his Evangelical themed critique of Mormonism are our fault and that no significant clarifications or correction have been made to his presentation of Mormonism. He has meanwhile continued to produce some refined countercult materials about Mormonism.

Between that and being dismissed as "not reading carefully enough" and assertions of "your argument isn't valid" substituting for real discussion I once again find myself doubting the sincerity of this challenge or Rob (and by extention IRRs) claim of scholarship and trying to understand Mormonism.

[wenglund]

Then perhaps you will use those feelings and gain some empathy as to the LDS objections to your "presentation" of Mormonism.

I was going to use Rob's same verbage back on him when he falsely accused me of dismissing what he had said, but I grow weary of beating him with his own sticks.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Vance]

Vance,

You wrote:

I'll bite. What's your point? I don't see anything in that verse where the point at hand comes up.

Why was it translated "gods" this time?

[Gervin]

Why was it translated "gods" this time?

Strongs:

angels, exceeding, God, very great, mighty

Plural of 'elowahh; gods in the ordinary sense; but specifically used (in the plural thus, especially with the article) of the supreme God; occasionally applied by way of deference to magistrates; and sometimes as a superlative -- angels, X exceeding, God (gods)(-dess, -ly), X (very) great, judges, X mighty.

Edited February 7, 2012 by Gervin

[Vance]

Why was it translated "gods" this time?

I see that I referred to the wrong verse.

Let's try Deut 10:17

http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Deu&c=10&t=KJV#conc/17

[Rob Bowman]

Vance,

Deuteronomy 10:17 says, "For Yahweh your God, he is God of the gods and Lord of the lords...." (literal translation). Forms of elohim are used in all three occurrences of "God"/"gods" here. In the first two occurrences the noun grammatically must be construed as an epithet for Yahweh (note the pronoun "he," usually omitted from English versions for stylistic purposes). The third occurrence is grammatically distinguished from Yahweh and so is not functioning as a singular epithet for Yahweh. Furthermore, that the traditional translation is correct is confirmed by the words that follow those quoted above: "...the God [el] great, mighty, and awesome...." Here Yahweh is called "God" using a singular form. It is quite common for Yahweh to be called el and elohim in the same context, showing that Elohim in these occurrences is treated as a singular form.

Nothing in this text differs from the general rule I explained earlier in this thread.

I see that I referred to the wrong verse.

Let's try Deut 10:17

http://www.bluelette...0&t=KJV#conc/17