Baptism and the Atonement

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, ksfisher said:

With the story Elder Packer relates I keep asking myself, "why doesn't the creditor just forgive the debt?"  That's what God does doesn't he?  When we sincerely repent he has promised that He will forgive our sins. 

I ask myself the same question. From what I understand, it's that justice is an eternal law, and God is subject to eternal law, so He literally can't take away the consequences/punishment. Someone, in this case Jesus, has to take the punishment. Like I said, it doesn't sound right to me.

[CV75]

34 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Ok- but I don't know how forgiveness shows mercy if it doesn't satisfy justice. Again, just a pat on the back and friendly tousle of the hair.

I appreciate the effort to answer my questions. I'll stop beating the dead horse. But in my mind if God forgives a sin there should be no remaining effects of that sin in eternity that then requires a remission. The band aid isn't very comforting.

Thank you all for the discussion. I've never thought these issues through in quite this way before so I appreciate it.

It's not really a dead horse because it seems that each question or issue offers a new angle to explore. In mortality, the sins that God forgives (and their corresponding effects) can return after being forgiven. This kind or level of forgiveness leaves open the option for a remission, which God ultimately grants in His wisdom at the right time, and which the scriptures consistently associate with baptism.

[HappyJackWagon]

15 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I ask myself the same question. From what I understand, it's that justice is an eternal law, and God is subject to eternal law, so He literally can't take away the consequences/punishment. Someone, in this case Jesus, has to take the punishment. Like I said, it doesn't sound right to me.

I agree.

God ceases to be omnipotent when he is subject greater laws or powers like Justice. Perhaps LDS belief in a "weak God" is why some Christian groups consider us to be non-Christian.

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

The issue for me was whether there are any immediate blessings to baptism and confirmation that someone who isn't baptized will miss out on if they have to wait 10 years. I was always taught that there are great blessings that would help young people as they grew up. I guess that's the minority view these days.

When I was a kid, I distinctly remember that baptism was the final thing I needed to do to wash away all of the sins I had committed before then--baptism itself is what turned repentance into a clean start, and then get the gift of the Holy Ghost.  There was supposed to be great value in that.

[consiglieri]

3 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Very curious. Thanks for providing a good reference for explanation. If we take D&C 20:37 at face value, we must define "forgiveness" and "remission of sins" differently. CV75 made a good attempt at that, but I still don't see the value of forgiveness coming from God that is not also a remission of sins. A temporal forgiveness seems like little more than a pat on the back.

It is amazing the amount of mental gymnastics theologians are capable of when attempting to harmonize conflicting scriptures. 

 

[jkwilliams]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

When I was a kid, I distinctly remember that baptism was the final thing I needed to do to wash away all of the sins I had committed before then--baptism itself is what turned repentance into a clean start, and then get the gift of the Holy Ghost.  There was supposed to be great value in that.

Apparently that isn't the case anymore, but that's what I was taught, too.

[CV75]

2 hours ago, Analytics said:

When I was a kid, I distinctly remember that baptism was the final thing I needed to do to wash away all of the sins I had committed before then--baptism itself is what turned repentance into a clean start, and then get the gift of the Holy Ghost.  There was supposed to be great value in that.

There is great value in that (to the degree we repented, hence the value of the sacrament as we progress spiritually through life). The former sins return if you don’t progress, which is why some children are taught to endure to the end, which is why some circumstances call for waiting for baptism.

[waveslider]

7 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I agree.

God ceases to be omnipotent when he is subject greater laws or powers like Justice. Perhaps LDS belief in a "weak God" is why some Christian groups consider us to be non-Christian.

Being subject to God's own laws, being omniscient so none of the laws are wrong to follow and aren't against His nature in any way shape or form, doesn't make Him weak. It doesn't distract from His omnipotence, because by His very nature He will never break those laws anyway. The consequences of sin result in death, separation from God, because we don't learn to be like God in our nature when we commit sin.

I tend to view the consequences of sin the same as throwing a rock into perfectly still water. It causes ripples and wave patterns that don't stop just because we have stopped throwing rocks into that water. We won't be able to see the calm happen without some kind of miraculous things canceling out those waves so perfectly that the water is smooth once more. If you can place a wave, at the exact opposite amplitude and wavelength of the original wave it instantly goes flat. As the pattern of waves created by the rock/sin increases in complexity, and the multitude of rocks/sins also increase, so does the need to have a pattern that cancels out those wave patterns. God did it through His only begotten Son, known as the atonement. In His omnipotence he created a way for our cosmic ripple patterns to be abolished back to God's perfect calmness. That implies a strong omnipotent God to me, not a weak one. Just my two cents worth anyway.

[mfbukowski]

9 hours ago, ksfisher said:

The traditional teachings on the atonement, most of which the LDS church has inherited from protestant churches, are increasingly not fitting with how I view the atonement and forgiveness.

Take your statement above, "justice demands punishment."  Who is this justice that is demanding punishment?  Is it a thing?  A person?  Why would this justice be demanding punishment anyway?  If God is this justice, or the embodiment of justice, why is he demanding punishment when he is, at the same time, dispensing mercy?

That part of traditional christian thinking just doesn't seem to work for me.

Agreed.

Maybe it goes back to the Greek goddess of Justice with the scales or "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN,"  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belshazzar's_feast

Regardless it is an oldie for sure

[mfbukowski]

9 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I agree.

God ceases to be omnipotent when he is subject greater laws or powers like Justice. Perhaps LDS belief in a "weak God" is why some Christian groups consider us to be non-Christian.

The notion of omnipotence is very confused- it presumes that there are a collection of "things to know" as if it was all in a box somewhere and God knows all those things and we don't.  Further it raises the problem of free will- if God knows all then can we act otherwise than the way God knows we will act?

Mormon philosopher David Paulsen points to James to solve this problem:

 

Quote

 

Whatever moral stimulus attaches to a world of genuine adventure and risk, James also recognizes our deep human need for religious comfort and security. ³⁴ He addresses the tension generated by these conflicting human needs throughout his writings, but never more directly than in his conclusion to “The Dilemma of Determinism,” where he attempts to show that even in a risk-filled world of agents with genuine freedom, God can providentially achieve his redemptive aims. ³⁵ He imagines his reader objecting to his notion of human freedom as follows:

Does not the admission of such an unguaranteed chance or freedom preclude utterly the notion of a Providence governing the world? Does it not leave the fate of the universe at the mercy of the chance-possibilities, and so far insecure? Does it not, in short, deny the craving of our nature for an ultimate peace behind all tempests, for a blue zenith above all clouds?

 

And James answers:

The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence to fulminating nothing but fataldecrees. If you allow him to provide possibilities as well as actualities to the universe, and to carry on his own thinking in those two categories just as we do ours, chances may be there, uncontrolled even by him, and the course of the universe be really ambiguous; and yet the end of all things may be just what he intended it to be from all eternity.

(1979a, 138)

 

James shows how this is possible by means of his famous chess-game analogy, in which he posits an expert (representing God) playing a chess game against a novice (representing finite free agents). While the expert cannot foresee the actual moves of his opponent, he can envisage in advance all of her possible moves. [End Page 126] Further, he knows how to respond to each of these possible moves in a way that leads in the direction of victory. James says, “And the victory infallibly arrives, after no matter how devious a course” (138). ³⁶ His point is that God can exist within a community of genuinely free agents whose choices he can thus neither completely control nor foreknow, and yet, by his creative responses to their free choices, he can still achieve his redemptive aims. Agentive freedom in what is ultimately a pluralistic universe does not negate God’s redemptive sovereignty.

 

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/18126

This argument completely avoids all the issues of omnipotence by imagining God as a super-human intelligence who is not unlike us, but simply infinitely intelligent.

He need not even know the future- he is simply able to adjust his plans to whatever is needed for him to complete his plan.

[JLHPROF]

7 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

The notion of omnipotence is very confused- it presumes that there are a collection of "things to know" as if it was all in a box somewhere and God knows all those things and we don't.  Further it raises the problem of free will- if God knows all then can we act otherwise than the way God knows we will act?

Which is why omnipotence is a false notion, along with omniscience and omnipresence.

2 hours ago, waveslider said:

Being subject to God's own laws, being omniscient so none of the laws are wrong to follow and aren't against His nature in any way shape or form, doesn't make Him weak. It doesn't distract from His omnipotence, because by His very nature He will never break those laws anyway.

God is not subject to his own laws.  That presumes that he created the laws, that there is the option to change them according to his own will, and that he only answers to himself.  None of that is true.
The laws are eternal and God became God by following them.  But they existed long before God did.  Joseph Smith made that clear, as does the temple.

[waveslider]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Further it raises the problem of free will- if God knows all then can we act otherwise than the way God knows we will act?

I don't see a problem with free will at all, just because someone else besides ourselves knows what we will choose or how we will act. It doesn't make it so that we know, and therefore we are still able to choose whatever we wish.

[waveslider]

3 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

God is not subject to his own laws. 

The Book of Mormon has some scriptures that say otherwise:

"Therefore, according to justice, the plan of redemption could not be brought about, only on conditions of repentance of men in this probationary state, yea, this preparatory state; for except it were for these conditions, mercy could not take effect except it should destroy the work of justice. Now the work of justice could not be destroyed; if so, God would cease to be God."
Alma 42:13

"But there is a law given, and a punishment affixed, and a repentance granted; which repentance, mercy claimeth; otherwise, justice claimeth the creature and executeth the law, and the law inflicteth the punishment; if not so, the works of justice would be destroyed, and God would cease to be God."
Alma 42:22

"What, do ye suppose that mercy can rob justice? I say unto you, Nay; not one whit. If so, God would cease to be God."
Alma 42:25

"And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles."
Mormon 9:19

 

[JLHPROF]

6 hours ago, waveslider said:

The Book of Mormon has some scriptures that say otherwise:

Yes, those scriptures say that God is subject to law.
Just as I said.
But they are not "God's laws".   If God created these laws then God could change these laws with no consequence.  They would be his and answerable only to him.  God is not answerable to his own creations.

These laws are eternal and were followed by all the Gods long before our God created this world and put laws in place to govern it.
 

[HappyJackWagon]

11 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

Which is why omnipotence is a false notion, along with omniscience and omnipresence.

God is not subject to his own laws.  That presumes that he created the laws, that there is the option to change them according to his own will, and that he only answers to himself.  None of that is true.
The laws are eternal and God became God by following them.  But they existed long before God did.  Joseph Smith made that clear, as does the temple.

I agree. If we took a poll at church on Sunday asking if God is omnipotent, the majority would say he is. Many would add in some nuance.

If we asked if God is omniscient, the majority would likely say he is.

If we asked if God is omnipresent, the majority would say he is NOT.

All of those things are part of the Christian creeds the church generally rejects but the omnipresent seems easier to reject wholeheartedly because of the doctrine of a corporeal Father, though it does get muddied with the Holy Ghost.

The creeds are a strong part of our culture and even seeps in to the church so that it feels unnatural to say that God is not all powerful. But in Mormon theology that is the accurate position. This rejection of the creeds and LDS differences on the nature and characteristics of God are precisely why some Christians don't consider Mormons to be true Christians.

[halconero]

On 8/15/2016 at 3:27 PM, consiglieri said:

Strangely, D&C 20:37 says a person has to have their sins forgiven BEFORE they are baptized.
 

So apparently one CAN receive forgiveness of sins WITHOUT baptism.

And in fact, this scripture says a person MUST receive forgiveness of their sins BEFORE being baptized.

Curioser and curioser.

Eh. Repenting of my sins and receiving the Spirit unto their remission is not the same as being forgiven. The response to this might be the accusation of "semantic wrangling," but I would argue that we disparage semantics too much when considering language and literature.

[waveslider]

4 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

The creeds are a strong part of our culture and even seeps in to the church so that it feels unnatural to say that God is not all powerful. But in Mormon theology that is the accurate position.

CFR on the Mormon theology that God isn't omnipotent. Christ says differently:

"But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."
Matthew 19:26

"Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth."
Mark 9:23

"And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible."
Mark 10:27

"And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt."
Mark 14:36

[HappyJackWagon]

56 minutes ago, waveslider said:

CFR on the Mormon theology that God isn't omnipotent. Christ says differently:

"But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."
Matthew 19:26

"Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth."
Mark 9:23

"And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible."
Mark 10:27

"And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt."
Mark 14:36

Follow my logic train here. According to Mormon theology...

Has God always been God? No.

How did God become God? By obeying eternal laws

Who created the eternal laws? No one. They are eternal and have always existed, even before God progressed to be God.

Can God break eternal laws? No. He would cease to be God.

Therefore, there are eternal laws with greater power than God, our Father.

 

Put an easier way- Can God create an immovable object that even he can't move. If he can, he lacks ALL power to move the object. If he can't, he lacks ALL power to create an immovable object.

If the church teaches that God is limited in any way, or bound in any way by an eternal law, by definition He would not be omnipotent.

 

[waveslider]

2 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Follow my logic train here. According to Mormon theology...

Has God always been God? No.

How did God become God? By obeying eternal laws

Who created the eternal laws? No one. They are eternal and have always existed, even before God progressed to be God.

Can God break eternal laws? No. He would cease to be God.

Therefore, there are eternal laws with greater power than God, our Father.

 

Put an easier way- Can God create an immovable object that even he can't move. If he can, he lacks ALL power to move the object. If he can't, he lacks ALL power to create an immovable object.

If the church teaches that God is limited in any way, or bound in any way by an eternal law, by definition He would not be omnipotent.

 

We ourselves are not omniscient so our logic doesn't really matter since we can't even fathom, completely omniscience, nor omnipotence. Heck we can't even truly fathom eternity in our mortal existence. I have at points in my life not been able to quantify my logic with how things work, but as I learn more things and see more facts, there eventually comes a time when I can see the flaw in my logic. I'm quite certain the same thing will happen here, since by Mormon theology we are only God's in embryo. What does a kid, let alone an embryo, know about being an adult? I have seen my kids tell me things should be a different way, and I'm sure it all seems logical to them, but as they get older they start to realize that the way I was doing things were the wiser way.

[HappyJackWagon]

2 minutes ago, waveslider said:

We ourselves are not omniscient so our logic doesn't really matter since we can't even fathom, completely omniscience, nor omnipotence. Heck we can't even truly fathom eternity in our mortal existence. I have at points in my life not been able to quantify my logic with how things work, but as I learn more things and see more facts, there eventually comes a time when I can see the flaw in my logic. I'm quite certain the same thing will happen here, since by Mormon theology we are only God's in embryo. What does a kid, let alone an embryo, know about being an adult? I have seen my kids tell me things should be a different way, and I'm sure it all seems logical to them, but as they get older they start to realize that the way I was doing things were the wiser way.

I agree. We can't possibly fathom omniscience nor omnipotence. So what makes us think we can claim it of God and understand what that means?

If we can't fathom it enough to say God ISN"T omnipotent, I don't think we can fathom it enough to say that He IS.

[waveslider]

1 hour ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I agree. We can't possibly fathom omniscience nor omnipotence. So what makes us think we can claim it of God and understand what that means?

If we can't fathom it enough to say God ISN"T omnipotent, I don't think we can fathom it enough to say that He IS.

Touche!

[JLHPROF]

3 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Follow my logic train here. According to Mormon theology...

Has God always been God? No.

How did God become God? By obeying eternal laws

Who created the eternal laws? No one. They are eternal and have always existed, even before God progressed to be God.

Can God break eternal laws? No. He would cease to be God.

Therefore, there are eternal laws with greater power than God, our Father.

 

Put an easier way- Can God create an immovable object that even he can't move. If he can, he lacks ALL power to move the object. If he can't, he lacks ALL power to create an immovable object.

If the church teaches that God is limited in any way, or bound in any way by an eternal law, by definition He would not be omnipotent.

100% correct.
I don't know why people are so insistent on the three O's.
An old holdover from our sectarian history I think. 

[mfbukowski]

On 8/17/2016 at 3:59 PM, JLHPROF said:

100% correct.
I don't know why people are so insistent on the three O's.
An old holdover from our sectarian history I think. 

I suggest you scroll up a few posts and read the first post of mine above this one

To me, this "problem" of the three O's has been solved without the alleged problems Happy Jack raises

[halconero]

On 8/16/2016 at 11:07 AM, jkwilliams said:

I ask myself the same question. From what I understand, it's that justice is an eternal law, and God is subject to eternal law, so He literally can't take away the consequences/punishment. Someone, in this case Jesus, has to take the punishment. Like I said, it doesn't sound right to me.

When we consider the debt of sin, sickness and mortality something more than just an eternal balance, I believe the purpose of the Atonement becomes a lot clearer. We often understand the justice and mercy view within the paradigm of the Ransom/Penal Substitution theory, which is the most common framework for explaining the Atonement in Western European Christianity (Christianity originating or having its roots in Western Europe, not necessarily being limited to their in its current spread). Unfortunately I believe that this limits the scope of the Atonement in its totality and healing power, as well as our sense of both justice and mercy. A close reading of scripture reveals multiple interpretations of the Atonement, each one enlightening in its own way. Nephi for instance, views the Atonement in the light of the scattering and gathering of Israel. Its interesting to note how he associates captivity and exile with Satan, and gathering and freedom with the Mediator (an often ignored Hebraism I don't think Joseph was smart enough to come up with on his own). 

Anyways, I believe that when we view justice and mercy, sacrifice and atonement, in the light of other Atonement theories not only does it elevate the power of God, but helps us understand the eternal balance. In particular, I love the Recapitulation Theory, present in Eastern Orthodoxy, that Christ's life and Atonement was retelling of humanity's story wherein in the injustice of life is made up in the mercy and power of Christ. Christ is the new Adam, the new creation of heart, mind, body and soul for humanity. Though it is necessary for all of us to pass through life in order to gain the experience necessary for exaltation, it doesn't make life's challenges just or merciful. Jesus, because of His divine Godhood, Sonship, and role as author of the Plan, participates in this injustice Himself partially in recompense for the demands it places on us fallible humans. His participation in every deprivation, both in his mortal experience and Atonement, and his overcoming of them satisfies the law of justice in that He was willing to do what we all have to do. His mercy is extended to us simply because not only are we unjust, but life is unjust to us as well. The law of justice in God's Plan doesn't just place us under punishment, it also demands that we be recompensed via our willingness to improve and follow Christ. Eve is the Mother of all Living, the Mother of Morality. In a real way, Mary is the New Eve bringing forth Immorality and Eternal Life embodied in Christ and his Atonement. 

In fact, the ultimate result of the Recapitulation Theory is the Orthodox theory of theosis, which bears remarkable similarities to our doctrine of exaltation. I'll allow Irenaeus, the framer of the theory, to speak for himself both on Atonement and Theosis:

"[Christ] was in these last days, according to the time appointed by the Father, united to His own workmanship, inasmuch as He became a man liable to suffering ... He commenced afresh the long line of human beings, and furnished us, in a brief, comprehensive manner, with salvation; so that what we had lost in Adam—namely, to be according to the image and likeness of God—that we might recover in Christ Jesus."

"He has therefore, in His work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy, and crushing him who had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam ...the enemy would not have been fairly vanquished, unless it had been a man [born] of woman who conquered him. ... And therefore does the Lord profess Himself to be the Son of man, comprising in Himself that original man out of whom the woman was fashioned, in order that, as our species went down to death through a vanquished man, so we may ascend to life again through a victorious one; and as through a man death received the palm [of victory] against us, so again by a man we may receive the palm against death."

Commentary on Irenaeus:

"For Irenaeus, the ultimate goal of Christ's work of solidarity with humankind is to make humankind divine. Of Jesus he says, he 'became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself'. This idea 'has been highly influential in the Greek Orthodox Church', having been taken on by many other Church Fathers, such as Athanasius, Augustine and Clement of Alexandria. This Eastern Orthodox theological development out of the recapitulation view of the atonement is called theosis.

A more contemporary, slightly differing expression of the recapitulation view can be seen in D. E. H. Whiteley's reading of Paul the Apostle's theology. Whiteley favourably quotes Irenaeus' notion that Christ 'became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself', although he never describes Paul's view of the atonement as a recapitulation; rather, he uses the word 'participation':

...if St. Paul can be said to hold a theory of the modus operandi [of the atonement], it is best described as one of salvation through participation: Christ shared all our experience, sin alone excepted, including death, in order that we, by virtue of our solidarity with him, might share his life"

When viewed in this life, the demands of justice are not some shortfall of righteousness, though sin certainly stains the soul. It is not a matter of simply forgiving a debt of sin or repentance. It is the recompense and mercy of a loving God empowering his followers to be free of the injustices of mortality. This is perhaps best summed up in the words of the Brothers Karamazov:

"I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened."

[HappyJackWagon]

9 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I suggest you scroll up a few posts and read the first post of mine above this one

To me, this "problem" of the three O's has been solved without the alleged problems Happy Jack raises

The problem with your last post is that it is confusing omnipotence and omniscience.

Omnipotence= All powerful

Omniscience = All knowing