Ntrw Posted March 4, 2017 Posted March 4, 2017 http://konoshunkan.blogspot.jp/2017/03/towards-mormon-theology-of-sex_4.html?m=1 Disclaimer The following post is not some creepy argument for "sex in heaven". In fact, its not about the after-life, at all. This post is not an exposition on Mormon doctrine, it is not a "revelation" of any kind. This is a spiritually unnessesary and intellectually gratuitous theology post and nothing else. The Sexual Gods of J's Prehistory The Jahwist source of Genesis offers an interesting, non-historical, myth where gods come down from heaven and successfully procreate with human women: That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose....There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. -Genesis 6:2-4 The phrase translated as "sons of God" is, in both Genesis 6:2 and Genesis 6:4, bene ha elohim(בְּנֵי הָֽאֱלֹהִים). We can read this several ways as sons of the God, sons of the gods or simply the gods. Joel 3:6 makes mention of "the Grecians", which appears in Hebrew as bene ha yevanim(בְנֵי הַיְּוָנִים ), sons of the Grecians. These verses can thus be rendered as: That the gods saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose....There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the gods came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. This myth is similar to other myths of the Mediterranean. The Greek gods sometimes mated with human women, their offspring being mighty heroes such as Achilles and Hercules. The Jahwist makes his view clear, gods are sexually compatible with humans; gods have sex. If these elohim have sex, what does that say about the authors view of their father or chief, who is obviously bothered by this intermarriage(Genesis 6:3). The Jahwist account of creation begins in Genesis 2:4,5 and refers to God as yahweh elohim(יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים). If elohim have sex, and Yahweh is an elohim, then Yahweh has sex. Further evidence of this is found in the Hebrew Bible. The serpent told Adam and Eve:"For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil"(Genesis 3:5). I will now focus on the words eat, knowing and the phrase good and evil, all of which are euphemisms for sex. The word for eat in Genesis 3:5 is the same as eat in Proverbs 30:20, 'akal(אכל): "Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness", eat is a euphemism for sex. The word for knowing in Genesis 3:5 is the same as the word for knew in Genesis 4:1, Genesis 19:5 and Genesis 19:8, yada( יָדַע), where know is a euphemism for sex. Finally, the good and evil in Genesis 3:5 is the same good and evil in 2 Samuel 19:35. In 2 Samuel, knowing good and evil does not refer to an 80 year old man's lack of moral accountability but his inability to partake in the pleasures of the royal harem: wine, women and song. Eating fruit from the forbidden tree gave the man and the woman knowledge of good and evil, three sexual euphemisms used in connection with becoming like the elohim, gods, who as we have already seen were sexual beings. The most strongest admission of divine sexuality comes from Yahweh himself. When the man and the woman were initially placed in the Garden of Eden they were naked and unashamed, but, after they gain sexual awareness, they realize they are naked and make "aprons"(Genesis 3:7), presumably to hide their loins(1 Kings 2:5). After confessing this fact, God then says "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil"(Genesis 3:22). God knows good and evil, God has his own sexual awareness, just like the other gods of his pantheon. Which gods specifically? "Although the entire pantheon is a possibility, the divine couple, Yahweh and his goddess consort, are more likely"(Coogan)." Towards a Mormon Sexual Theology Mormonism is unique in it's insistence God the Father has a body of flesh and bones, as tangible as man's. God the Father also has a Wife, our Heavenly Mother. Gods are by definition married men and women(D&C 132). According to the Proclamation on the Family:ALL HUMAN BEINGS—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose. Regardless of what the Bible and Doctrine and Covenants say, or don't say, about about "sex in heaven", what do these scriptures and official church publications say about sex here and now? If, according to the Jahwist, the gods and goddesses have sex then sex is a holy and divine act. If the Jawhist is correct then man and wife resemble the gods most when having sex. If man and wife, when having sex, are engaging in a holy and divine act then the law of chastity isn't about sexual repression at all but sexual sanctification. Modesty in clothing, for men and women, isn't about shaming but exalting. Just as a devout Mormon would never wear the robes of the holy priesthood at a disco, or speak openly about and video tape the Endowment or a Sealing(temple marriage), one should treat the human body and sex with the same levels of respect and care as one would the temple ordinances; and just as we should go to the temple as often as possible, man and wife should have sex as often as possible and for the same reasons. The Two Faces of Grace The English word grace is cognate with the Spanish, gracias(thanks) and both words are cognate with gratis(free). To accept God's grace is nothing less than having gratitude for what is freely given. What is freely given? Everything. In his talk, The Three Pillars of Eternity, Elder Bruce R. McConkie taught that the plan of salvation is based and three absolutes: The Creation, The Fall and the The Atonement. If grace is that which is freely given, then the plan of salvation starts with grace(the Creation) then our rejection of grace(the Fall), followed by our return to grace(the Atonement); or in other words, our lives, in relation to God, start with what He freely gives us, our turning from what He gives to what we think we want and then, if we're blessed with the faith, returning to what he freely gives us. If the ordinances of the priesthood are what we turn to for accessing the grace of the Atonement and the temple is the place where we provisionally access the highest ordinances and blessings of the Atonement, where do we turn to access to the grace of the Creation? What if the forest, desert, beach and mountains are to Creation what the chapel is to the Atonement and the sexual act, between husband and wife, are to Creation what the temple is to the Atonement? In this view, a wilderness hike is to sacrament meeting, what marital sex is to the endowment. Sex would then be an act of worship, or even an act of mysticism, like meditation, prayer and scripture study. Further Reading on Israelite Pantheon "A generation ago, when I was a graduate student, biblical scholars were nearly unanimous in thinking that monotheism had been predominant in ancient Israelite religion from the beginning—not just as an "ideal," but as the reality. Today all that has changed. Virtually all mainstream scholars (and even a few conservatives) acknowledge that true monotheism emerged only in the period of the exile in Babylon in the 6th century B.C.E., as the canon of the Hebrew Bible was taking shape." -William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel,pg 294–95. "Many biblical writers frequently used polytheistic concepts, depicting Yahweh as the head of a large pantheon whose members advised him and celebrated his accomplishments. This pantheon functioned, as in Mesopotamian and Greek religion, as a kind of divine council or assembly, under the rule of the high god." -Michael Coogan, God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says pg 116. "Yet at the same time, Pslam 82, like Deutoronomy 32:8-9, preserves the outlines of the older theology it is rejecting. From the perspective of this older theology, Yahweh did not belong to the top tier of the pantheon. Instead, in early Israel, the god of Israel apparently belonged to the second tier of the pantheon; he was not the presider god, but one of his sons. Accordingly, what is at work is not a loss of the second tier of a pantheon headed by Yahweh. Instead, the collapse of the first and second tiers in the early Israelite pantheon was caused by an identification of El, head of this pantheon, with Yahweh, a member of the second tier." -Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts, pg 68. Yahweh and His Wife "One of the members of the Israelite pantheon was Asherah. She was worshiped in the Temple in Jerusalem, where her statue was clothed with garments woven by women working in the Temple precincts. ... In Jerusalem and throughout the land, this goddess, the queen of heaven, was paired with Yahweh, the king of heaven." -Michael Coogan, God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says, pg. 116-117. "The language of a divine couple and their offspring stems from a living religious tradition in ancient Israel itself, for which we have documentation in the Bible, in it's polemics and commandments. We also have evidence for this tradition in non-biblical texts and artifacts, even though these are only sporadically attested because of the vagaries of preservation and discovery. The cumulative evidence, however, is continuous and undeniable: Yahweh is envisioned as a sexual being." -Michael Coogan, God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says, pg 120. "God addresses his pantheon, his divine council: 'Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness.' The narrator goes on to say: 'So God[elohim] created humans in his image in the image of elohim he created them, male and female he created them.'...An alternative is to understand elohim in the second line in it's plural sense: humans are male and female in the image of the gods -because the gods are male and female, humans are as well. Which male and female deities are the model? Although the entire pantheon is a possibility, the divine couple, Yahweh and his goddess consort, are more likely." -Michael Coogan, God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says, pg 118 1
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