mfbukowski Posted August 30, 2012 Posted August 30, 2012 One of the criticisms of the LDS view of deification is that while man can become perfected and share in God's divinity, man can't completely attain the status of God in any real sense because God is God and man is man. All you are saying is that a thing is what it is. That's not too illuminating.Sounds like Catholic theology to me. The whole notion of "nature" in this sense is unexplainable. What is the nature of a dog? To be doglikeWhat is the nature of a tree? To be tree likeWhat is the nature of a rock? To be rocklikeWhat is the nature of God? To be GodlikeWhat is the nature of man? To be manlike.Can you see how none of these explain anything about being dogs or rocks or trees or men or God?It is the old "virtus dormitiva"- How does a sleeping potion cause sleep? "By virtue of its dormitive properties" of course!It explains nothing! Does a fertilized human ovum have human nature? Does a seed of a redwood tree have redwood nature?These words, like nature, essence, being, substance, have really no meaning outside of their contexts and can pretty much mean anything you want and are notorious for supposedly explaining something when indeed they explain nothing. 3
thesometimesaint Posted August 30, 2012 Posted August 30, 2012 To be technically accurate we are Homo Sapiens Sapiens. I suppose God would be the ultimate Homo Sapiens Sapiens
halconero Posted August 30, 2012 Posted August 30, 2012 Are we not gods already in a certain sense? Cannot the words god and man be interchangeable in Latter-day Saint theology?The Pearl of Great Price calls Heavenly Father "Man of Holiness." James E. Talmage in Jesus the Christ argues that this title makes the subsequent titles of "Son of God" and "Son of Man" indistinguishable.In my view God is the epitomy of what it is to be Man. He is the exalted, or fully-evolved, human.My belief is that we are already gods/men who have yet to fully achieve our possible potential. We are gods/boys to his God/Man.
mfbukowski Posted August 30, 2012 Posted August 30, 2012 To be technically accurate we are Homo Sapiens Sapiens. I suppose God would be the ultimate Homo Sapiens SapiensUnfortunately of course that is a title we dreamed up and a classification created by humans. Those are human classifications.He might have something to say about all that, but fortunately he is an understanding Father. I prefer to think in terms of him having our form in some sense, whatever that means, and being the Father of our spirits. That's good enough for me.If he had a problem with us thinking we were alike in some way, I suppose he could have appeared to Joseph as a shimmering ball of light or something, and we wouldn't be having this discussion 1
mfbukowski Posted August 30, 2012 Posted August 30, 2012 (edited) Are we not gods already in a certain sense? Cannot the words god and man be interchangeable in Latter-day Saint theology?The Pearl of Great Price calls Heavenly Father "Man of Holiness." James E. Talmage in Jesus the Christ argues that this title makes the subsequent titles of "Son of God" and "Son of Man" indistinguishable.In my view God is the epitomy of what it is to be Man. He is the exalted, or fully-evolved, human.My belief is that we are already gods/men who have yet to fully achieve our possible potential. We are gods/boys to his God/Man.Maybe more like a fertilized ovum to his millions of years old wisdom But what you have stated here by putting it into words, is taking the matter unorganized of this thread and creating organization out of it through the Word, by which all things are created. - John 1You have just done the same thing in a very small way, that God does.Besides all that you get the prize for coolest avatar! Edited August 30, 2012 by mfbukowski
Ahab Posted August 30, 2012 Posted August 30, 2012 Are we not gods already in a certain sense? Cannot the words god and man be interchangeable in Latter-day Saint theology?Yes, but also understand that a woman can be god (or God), too. God is both male and female, as a "kind" of a being.The Pearl of Great Price calls Heavenly Father "Man of Holiness." James E. Talmage in Jesus the Christ argues that this title makes the subsequent titles of "Son of God" and "Son of Man" indistinguishable.From a certain perspective, yes, and once you realize a "Son of God" is also God, too, both God and Son of God are also indistinguishable, from a certain perspective.In my view God is the epitomy of what it is to be Man. He is the exalted, or fully-evolved, human.I have a particular perspective among the many I have which helps me to view God as whatever it is to be man, or woman, regardless of whether that man or woman is good or evil, and regardless of the degree to which he/she is one or the other or somewhere in the middle. In that view, even a 100% evil man or woman could correctly be referred to as God because of his/her particular species. Like Satan, for example, who can also be correctly referred to as God, although he is 100% evil. I tend to avoid talking about God in that particular sense, though, because many of us are so easily confused, so instead I'll usually use the term God to refer to those who are 100% good while those who are 100% evil are Satan.My belief is that we are already gods/men who have yet to fully achieve our possible potential. We are gods/boys to his God/Man.Yes, and it is also still yet to be determined whether or not we will become 100% good or evil or fall somewhere in the middle while all the while we'll remain the same species.
BCSpace Posted August 30, 2012 Posted August 30, 2012 Yes. God is a homo sapiens just like we are. Obviously exaltation adds additional properties, but I don't see the genetics changing at all.We are Homo Sapiens. Perhaps God could be more appropriately termed Homo Exaltus.Given Ps 82:6 and Acts 17:28, basically comapring us to the Gods now in our present state, I'd say homo sapiens still works.
mrmandias Posted August 30, 2012 Posted August 30, 2012 All Christians believe that God is a human. Christ, specifically. But since the Father and the Son are one, this is a distinction without a difference.
Ahab Posted August 30, 2012 Posted August 30, 2012 All Christians believe that God is a human. Christ, specifically. But since the Father and the Son are one, this is a distinction without a difference.Ever wonder why some people like to point out that Jesus Christ was both human and divine?\I think maybe it matters a little how a person defines "human" and/or "divine".After all, humans are alreayd divine, or at least our spirits are.Like the good book says: We are spirits having a human experience, not just humans having spiritual experiences.
Zakuska Posted August 30, 2012 Posted August 30, 2012 Paul was talking to non-Christians and saying we are God's offspring -- good quote. Traditional Christians seem to limit the understanding of our being God's children to those who are adopted into God's family through baptism. That limit seems strained in light of Acts 17:29.And don't forget about Luke 3:38.38 Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.
Ahab Posted August 30, 2012 Posted August 30, 2012 And don't forget about Luke 3:38.38 Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.Do you think it might help if we explain how Jesus Christ was and is the only begotten son of our heavenly Father, in the flesh, or do you think that would only confuse them some more?Sometimes I wonder when and if I should keep trying to explain things to them. 1
Robert F. Smith Posted August 31, 2012 Posted August 31, 2012 Hello Bart...I'm puzzled at your assertion that "traditional" Christians see God as "completely other" and "different." I'd like you to say what that "other" is, and what is "different" in their view.I just assumed that the Genesis description of man/woman being created in God's image and likeness pretty much answered the major question of who we are like in comparison to God... and the scripture that tells us that God is the father of our spirits... and that when Adam/Eve partook of the forbidden fruit they became as the gods, knowing good from evil.When traditional Christians think of our species vs God's species, where in the scriptures does it say he is different than us... or completely other... "Completely" is a pretty strong term...edit to add: "Completely other" conjures up images in my mind of Mothman for instance...GGTraditional Judeo-Christian dogma holds that God is the only uncaused cause, that He exists outside time and space, and that everything was created by Him from nothing (creatio ex nihilo) -- meaning that all else is unnecessary and merely contingent (that means us along with all of creation). Muslims go a bit further than this and say that "God does not beget and is not begotten." God is thus wholly other, and is not at all like humans, and that any anthropomorphisms in Scripture are metaphorical only -- never to be taken literally. Only if God is wholly other, omnipotent, omnibeneficient, ahd omnipresent is He worthy of our awe and worship.Your confusion stems from the philosophical position which such a traditional dogma fills being in direct contradiction of Scripture, such as the sequence in which God makes man in his own image, after his likeness, and then Adam & Even produce offspring which are likewise described as in their image and likeness. The God of the philosophers is not the God of the Bible. See, for example, the following discussions:Norbert Samuelson, "That the God of the Philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." Harvard Theological Review, 65 (1972):1-27.Georg Picht, “The God of the Philosophers,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 48/1 (1980), 61-79. Online at http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/content/XLVIII/1/61.abstractAbstract: Today all schools of philosophy seem to be agreed that God has no place in philosophy except as a phenomenon of the past. Whether the same fate awaits the God of Christian theology depends on whether the truth that appeared to the Greeks in the epiphany of the “God of the philosophers, ” who entered into alliance with the biblical God in Christian theology and whose death Nietzsche proclaimed, can come to light in a new form beyond the nihilism of Nietzsche's diagnosis. To understand the dimensions of the problem requires that one be clear on the nature of the God of the philosophers and its relation to the God of biblical revelation and that one see Nietzsche's diagnosis of nihilism against this background and in relation to today's possibilities. 1
Bill Hamblin Posted August 31, 2012 Posted August 31, 2012 S. Webb, Jesus Christ, Eternal God: Heavenly Flesh and the Metaphysics of Matter (Oxford, 2011)
Robert F. Smith Posted August 31, 2012 Posted August 31, 2012 To be technically accurate we are Homo Sapiens Sapiens. I suppose God would be the ultimate Homo Sapiens SapiensThat is a biological classification, and only a stage in the development of something much greater than Homo sapiens sapiens. To be of the genus & species of God takes us far beyond Earth.One thing we do know: In Jesus, "the acorn didn't fall far from the tree."
Robert F. Smith Posted August 31, 2012 Posted August 31, 2012 (edited) S. Webb, Jesus Christ, Eternal God: Heavenly Flesh and the Metaphysics of Matter (Oxford, 2011)Wonderful, and the book description at that site bears repeating here:In this groundbreaking study, Stephen H. Webb offers a new theological understanding of the material and spiritual: that, far from being contradictory, they unite in the very stuff of the eternal Jesus Christ.Accepting matter as a perfection (or predicate) of the divine requires a rethinking of the immateriality of God, the doctrine of creation out of nothing, the Chalcedonian formula of the person of Christ, and the analogical nature of religious language. It also requires a careful reconsideration of Augustine's appropriation of the Neo-Platonic understanding of divine incorporeality as well as Origen's rejection of anthropomorphism. Webb locates his position in contrast to evolutionary theories of emergent materialism and the popular idea that the world is God's body. He draws on a little known theological position known as the ''heavenly flesh'' Christology, investigates the many misunderstandings of its origins and relation to the Monophysite movement, and supplements it with retrievals of Duns Scotus, Caspar Scwenckfeld and Eastern Orthodox reflections on the transfiguration. Also included in Webb's study are discussions of classical figures like Barth and Aquinas as well as more recent theological proposals from Bruce McCormack, David Hart, and Colin Gunton. Perhaps most provocatively, the book argues that Mormonism provides the most challenging, urgent, and potentially rewarding source for metaphysical renewal today.Webb's concept of Christian materialism challenges traditional Christian common sense, and aims to show the way to a more metaphysically sound orthodoxy. Edited August 31, 2012 by Robert F. Smith
Nofear Posted August 31, 2012 Posted August 31, 2012 Unfortunately of course that is a title we dreamed up and a classification created by humans. Those are human classifications.He might have something to say about all that, but fortunately he is an understanding Father. I prefer to think in terms of him having our form in some sense, whatever that means, and being the Father of our spirits. That's good enough for me.Agreed. Indeed, I think classifying Heavenly Father as a homo sapien or related to it is clearly very limiting. Are humans on an entirely different planet, during its mortal phase, "homo sapiens"? Would the same classification scheme that we use for this earth even work efficiently? We would certainly carry a very similar outward appearance but would we share the same phenotype or genotype? For example, Is it plausible, acceptable to Mormonism for humans on other planets, during their mortal phase, to have a bluish skin so as to better accommodate that planet's sun? Are four fingers ok or does it have to be five? Do they have the same vestigial structures? The list could go on... but we don't really know for sure.In short, I think we are sometimes far, far too geocentric when it comes to our conception of our God and our humanity. Our race extends onto countless planets and into realms before and after a temporal world. Trying to constrain our race to such limited classification schemes seems... silly. 1
JeremyOrbe-Smith Posted August 31, 2012 Posted August 31, 2012 ... Krishna was blue, wasn't he? I think that all Intelligences are of the same "species", but that the bodies they inhabit must be constrained by the particular environments in their respective local ecospheres. Clearly we must have evolved to be sufficiently similar enough that the Gods could say that we're in their "image", but there is enough variation between a tanned 400-pound 6'7" Tongan male and a pale 90-pound 4'5" red-headed Irish girl that the term "human" has to be broad enough to encompass a very wide spectrum of physical traits. Some humans are already born with "extra" fingers and toes, or vestigial tails; it's only our strange sense of what is "natural" that makes us so eager to chop such things off ("fashionable" might be a better term, which is certainly cringe-worthy). On the other hand, if life is composed of the same basic elements and the goldilocks zone turns out to be a necessary constant, then we should expect relatively similar functions to produce relatively similar forms while life is evolving into forms suitable for Intelligences to inhabit; the diversity of earthly fauna is almost mind-bogglingly complex, and yet it is not infinite.
JeremyOrbe-Smith Posted August 31, 2012 Posted August 31, 2012 Clearly the government cover-up of contact with blue-skinned anthropoid extraterrestrials is part of a Zionist-Illuminati-NewWorldOrder conspiracy to enslave the feeble-minded sheeple to their religious opiates until the Reptilian Knights Templar Freemasons cross over from the Sirius starcluster through the occult Stargates that Opus Dei inscribed into the Satanic LDS pentagrams converging on the appropriate ley lines.
mfbukowski Posted August 31, 2012 Posted August 31, 2012 (edited) Agreed. Indeed, I think classifying Heavenly Father as a homo sapien or related to it is clearly very limiting. Are humans on an entirely different planet, during its mortal phase, "homo sapiens"? Would the same classification scheme that we use for this earth even work efficiently? We would certainly carry a very similar outward appearance but would we share the same phenotype or genotype? For example, Is it plausible, acceptable to Mormonism for humans on other planets, during their mortal phase, to have a bluish skin so as to better accommodate that planet's sun? Are four fingers ok or does it have to be five? Do they have the same vestigial structures? The list could go on... but we don't really know for sure.In short, I think we are sometimes far, far too geocentric when it comes to our conception of our God and our humanity. Our race extends onto countless planets and into realms before and after a temporal world. Trying to constrain our race to such limited classification schemes seems... silly.Star Trek.I kind of liked the fact that all the "humanoids" they came up with were still basically like us, and I will give you a little secret why I think that there is some kind of link between our forms and our functions and why God looks like us.What is it that God-beings do? We create environments out of matter unorganized, making us infinitely adaptable, from being able to survive and thrive miles below the ocean surface, in the Sahara Desert, at the North Pole and even on the moon. We create our own "worlds" without number from matter unorganized.If that is the requirement for godhood, what are the physical characteristics necessary to do that- working backwards from what we know Godhood means?We must be able to manipulate the environment in many different ways. That means a big brain- that means complex social organization with the ability to communicate and teach each other what discoveries others have made- we call that "science". But before that, we need to be able to pick up things and carry them. That means we need hands or something like them, and we need to be able to walk while carrying a rock or a spear or an animal we have killed.So you need independent locomotive equipment and it must be able to operate while locomoting. Horses can't do that- they don't have hands. Whales can't do that for the same reasons. These creatures are restricted in what environments they can adapt to. You could have a horse as smart as a man, and he still couldn't lift a spear and carry it while chasing down another animal. Horses cannot create worlds due to their physical limitations even if they had language etc, as silly as that sounds. It is now believed that whales and dolphins are incredibly intelligent- and have a social structure and perhaps have a "language" but their bodies are literally not equipped to do anything but swim and eat and reproduce. You put one up on land, and it is not going to walk back to the ocean, the way a man, if dropped a few hundred yards from shore in the ocean could swim back to land.So I submit that two hands two arms two legs and a brain that can process language and an ability to have social interaction are a pretty good equipment set if one is going to be able to create tools and societies and environmental "worlds" to enable you to stay warm, or out of the sun, or have a comfortable nest to raise one's babies to enable you to populate and adapt to almost any environment.In other words, one might say that one must be in the image of a God. Edited August 31, 2012 by mfbukowski 1
Nofear Posted August 31, 2012 Posted August 31, 2012 In other words, one might say that one must be in the image of a God.Yep, that's almost as far as we can go. I think he will/does look familiar (2 eyes, 2 ears, 10 fingers, 10 toes, body hair, etc.) consistent with various encounters. Clearly there is some choice in our resurrection. Christ was able to retain his stigmata. People need not be bald. Does every male have to have a beard? BMI? Lots of questions. For now I'll stick with being in the image of God and that I am his child.
mrmandias Posted August 31, 2012 Posted August 31, 2012 I'm highly sceptical that evolution will necessarily produce recognizably humanoid intelligences if it produces intelligences. Using your unnecessarily limited strictures--two hands, etc.--you can still get a partially armored creature whose main body is horizontal like a tyrannosaur's with a massive tail, with the two arms located *behind* the legs and jutting forward over the legs (which are side mounted like a lizard's, not undermounted like a mammal's) and cleverly jointed so as to use the legs for support and as an additional fulcrum, with a bullet head projecting straight out from the body with no neck, 'hands' at the end of the arms that are covered with cilia for fine motor work, and communication through a kind of clacker on the tail that does a kind of morse code, supplemented by elaborate gestures and tail movements. They lay 'eggs', which have a kind of port that allows the eggs to be fed and an elaborate internal organ for processing the food.More here:http://www.jrganymede.com/2010/06/02/the-doctrinal-problem-of-evolution/Of course conventional Christians have their own problem with multiple intelligent species throughout the galaxy. They either have to deny that Christ's atonement was powerful enough for all creation everywhere (C.S. Lewis does this) or else they have to explain why Christ chose to be born as a man instead of one of the billions of species of dodo sapiens.The solutions to either our problem or theirs tend to get a little strange.
JeremyOrbe-Smith Posted August 31, 2012 Posted August 31, 2012 Perhaps a little Gilda Trillim would be apropos at this point.
thesometimesaint Posted August 31, 2012 Posted August 31, 2012 Nofear:Since George Burns played God in the movies. I can't help but visualize Heavenly Father as looking like George Burns.
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