What do we really know about God the Father?

[mfbukowski]

On 4/23/2017 at 10:43 PM, Rain said:

Because I don't like to assume things,  what are you saying here? 

Luke 17:21

Quote

 

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

 

The kingdom of God is about your attitude toward life- it's what gives your life meaning and purpose.

If all that is important to you is riches and toys etc- that is your god.

[mfbukowski]

On 4/24/2017 at 0:51 AM, Bernard Gui said:

From Encyclopedia of Mormonism...

 

Divine Investiture of Authority.

Some angel "wrestled" with Jacob.

This is the way one absolutely brilliant writer said it.

Quote

 

The account of this struggle is one of the most cryptic chapters in all scripture, in which Jacob receives his new name from God, “Israel,” or “he who prevails,” after wrestling all night long with the angel, interpreted to be the Lord himself.

Scripture tells us that in this struggle, Jacob “prevailed.” But how can man prevail against God?

The only way is through consistent, diligent, humble obedience, which shows worthiness. Ultimately, this is the way Israel “prevailed” against the angel — by persisting in seeking a blessing despite being completely humbled.

The story tells us that Jacob held fast to the angel and would not allow him to escape, leaving the angel no alternative but to dislocate Jacob’s hip. Jacob/Israel had lost the fight, yet Jacob still would not release the angel, insisting that the Lord give him a blessing. The angel ultimately agreed and gave him his blessing. So in the long run, Israel “prevailed” through surrender to God and an unwavering commitment to do what was necessary to receive God’s blessings. By any objective measure, he limped away from the battle a defeated man, yet God pronounced that Jacob, now “Israel,” had prevailed by his persistence and ultimate surrender to God’s will. By struggling well to do what God ultimately desired of him, Jacob was blessed and became favored of God. The endowment of blessings resulted in God’s changing Jacob’s name to “Israel,” “He who prevails with God.”

For Mormons, as “children of Israel” we may apply this story to our own personal struggles in weighing the philosophies of men against scripture. Though we have no systematic theology, each of us has to become his or her own systematic theologian in our own wrestlings with the angel, our own struggle to answer these questions to our own satisfaction. Literal interpretations appeal to some, and some literalists include positivism in their mental repertoire. To others, historical evidence is essential. To others the philosophy must gel perfectly with a scriptural interpretation. Still others see scripture as largely symbolic, [Page 71]figurative, and perhaps interpretable in terms of Jungian archetypes or Freudian projections. To faithful Latter-day Saints, all paradigms are possible as long as their lives are lived in orthopraxis under the principles of obedience and sacrifice and the keeping of sacred covenants. In short, each of us needs to take “matter unorganized” and organize it into a rational world that makes sense to each of us according to our personal needs.

 

https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/untangling-scripture-from-the-philosophies-of-men/

[Meadowchik]

From this side of things, it is hard to warm to a conception of God that continues to be used for the subjugation of women.

And the concept of Heavenly Mother(s) doesn't necessarily bring the missing balance to the Divine.

[Bernard Gui]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

Divine Investiture of Authority.

Some angel "wrestled" with Jacob.

This is the way one absolutely brilliant writer said it.

https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/untangling-scripture-from-the-philosophies-of-men/

Thanks for showing this. That writer is brilliant beyond a doubt. His brilliance is exceeded only  by his humility.

Were everything codified, stamped with the seal of approval, cut and dried, jammed into the exact air-tight boxes, where would faith fit?

If we could grasp everything within our reach, what would heaven be for?

Edited May 6, 2017 by Bernard Gui

[Bernard Gui]

1 hour ago, Meadowchik said:

From this side of things, it is hard to warm to a conception of God that continues to be used for the subjugation of women.

And the concept of Heavenly Mother(s) doesn't necessarily bring the missing balance to the Divine.

Since we know nothing about Her/Them, how can we draw that conclusion?

[Bernard Gui]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

Luke 17:21

The kingdom of God is about your attitude toward life- it's what gives your life meaning and purpose.

If all that is important to you is riches and toys etc- that is your god.

Would you agree we serve (worship) that which we love most?

[Meadowchik]

6 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Since we know nothing about Her/Them, how can we draw that conclusion?

Please restate what you think I concluded.

[Bernard Gui]

24 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Please restate what you think I concluded.

"And the concept of Heavenly Mother(s) doesn't necessarily bring the missing balance to the Divine."

About all we have is the concept expressed in two declarations, a hymn, and a few conjectures.

Edited May 6, 2017 by Bernard Gui

[Rain]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

Luke 17:21

The kingdom of God is about your attitude toward life- it's what gives your life meaning and purpose.

If all that is important to you is riches and toys etc- that is your god.

I appeciate you answering, but I was asking specifically what Bobbieaware meant to say. I felt she was saying something about me, but didn't want to assume that.

For the record, all the little things don't really matter to me except that I have found that often people who know the little things about me actually know me better in the big things as well.  They have observed me, spent time with me etc enough to know what those little things are. 

My daughter LOVES peanut butter. She also loves people and hugs them and cries with them and shows them the greatest compassion. In the whole eternal plan the peanut butter doesn't mean much compared to her compassion, but if you dont know she loves peanut butter you really don't know her, you just know her character. 

Maybe thats why I am interested in the little things about Heavenly Father. It's not so much that I know every single thing about him, but being close enough to Him that he reveals more things, even little things, about himself. It doesn't matter that I know if he like pizza, but the fact that I don't know ANY little thing about him shows me I really don't know much more about him than he loves me. 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

Thanks for showing this. That writer is brilliant beyond a doubt. His brilliance is exceeded only  by his humility.

Were everything codified, stamped with the seal of approval, cut and dried, jammed into the exact air-tight boxes, where would faith fit?

If we could grasp everything within our reach, what would heaven be for?

mr super humble super brilliant says :

'Zaktly!

[mfbukowski]

28 minutes ago, Rain said:

I appeciate you answering, but I was asking specifically what Bobbieaware meant to say. I felt she was saying something about me, but didn't want to assume that.

For the record, all the little things don't really matter to me except that I have found that often people who know the little things about me actually know me better in the big things as well.  They have observed me, spent time with me etc enough to know what those little things are. 

My daughter LOVES peanut butter. She also loves people and hugs them and cries with them and shows them the greatest compassion. In the whole eternal plan the peanut butter doesn't mean much compared to her compassion, but if you dont know she loves peanut butter you really don't know her, you just know her character. 

Maybe thats why I am interested in the little things about Heavenly Father. It's not so much that I know every single thing about him, but being close enough to Him that he reveals more things, even little things, about himself. It doesn't matter that I know if he like pizza, but the fact that I don't know ANY little thing about him shows me I really don't know much more about him than he loves me. 

Agreed

And I did not stop Bobbieaware from responding.  PM is a good option for private conversations

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

Would you agree we serve (worship) that which we love most?

Yeppers

Time is all we have.  That upon which you spend time is what you worship.  So get off this board now.

 

[Bernard Gui]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Yeppers

Time is all we have.  That upon which you spend time is what you worship.  So get off this board now.

 

Ok, boss. I'm turning on the tv.

[Bobbieaware]

7 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

DANG!

That's good stuff!

Do you have a reference for that last sentence?  To me, that's all of it!  If people could truly get that, that is all of it.

But I am positive that God preferred sausage- no question.  That should be in the Articles of Faith.

 

I must say I prefer sausage on my pizza as well. Another example of how those faithful Church members who possess deep and penetrating intellects think alike.

The Joseph Smith quote is from the King Follett Discourse... "If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves."

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

Ok, boss. I'm turning on the tv.

[Meadowchik]

7 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

"And the concept of Heavenly Mother(s) doesn't necessarily bring the missing balance to the Divine."

About all we have is the concept expressed in two declarations, a hymn, and a few conjectures.

What I said is a statement about lack of supporting balance, which is consistent with what you cite as lack of information.

[Meadowchik]

Thus, in Mormonism we're still stuck with a God concept used to subjugate women.

[RevTestament]

I didn't realize having a father subjugated women - I guess all women are really in trouble.

[Meadowchik]

3 hours ago, RevTestament said:

I didn't realize having a father subjugated women - I guess all women are really in trouble.

It doesn't necessarily, but as Joseph's beliefs about God evolved from Trinitarian to the Godhead (doing so as his versions of the First Vision, Book of Mormon and other church writings changed) with God the Father having a body, he used that doctrine to institute polygamy as the New and Everlasting Covenant of divine origin.

 

[Teancum]

On 5/6/2017 at 3:59 PM, mfbukowski said:

Uh, I think revolutionizing Christianity with the idea of an embodied God with all that implies about immanence and transcendence, all that implies the King Follette discourse, the Council of the Gods, the correct philosophy which makes God our Father instead some location-less cloud of nothing, the inference that therefore matter and spirit or energy are one force, the idea that the soul is both spirit and body, the notion that there are multiple eternities and multiple worlds....

I would say that is just a tad that we know that most Christians do not.

But heck, who's counting

Oh wait.

You are.

In that case I would say your are blatantly wrong.  In a nice way of course.

Love ya bro, but you are barking up the wrong tree of life.

 

I think we are on the same page.  You summarized what I was trying to say quite well.  Mormons claim to know A LOT about God the Father.  The OP if I understood it correctly argues we really don't know much about God the Father.  But I think Mormons should say that they do!  Quite a bit actually.  Now one can argue whether the Mormon claims are accurate.  But during my time as a believing Mormon I certainly was proud of what we taught and claimed to know about God the father.

I appreciate your patience with me.

[RevTestament]

1 hour ago, Meadowchik said:

It doesn't necessarily, but as Joseph's beliefs about God evolved from Trinitarian to the Godhead (doing so as his versions of the First Vision, Book of Mormon and other church writings changed) with God the Father having a body, he used that doctrine to institute polygamy as the New and Everlasting Covenant of divine origin.

The idea that Heavenly Father doesn't have a body arose not from Christ but from neo-Platonism. It is not scriptural. When Christ shall be called the Eternal Father, will He give up His body? The one He regained in resurrection to teach us about eternal possibilities? 

Polygamy was never outlawed in the Bible. You seem to feel it has a purpose to subjugate women. Often this was the case which is why the Lord outlawed it for the Nephites. So this is not the reason the Lord allows polygamy. It is distinctly not to subjugate women. Anyway that is getting off topic. i may agree that the Church has not always lived it correctly, but that too is another topic.

[Meadowchik]

36 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

The idea that Heavenly Father doesn't have a body arose not from Christ but from neo-Platonism. It is not scriptural. When Christ shall be called the Eternal Father, will He give up His body? The one He regained in resurrection to teach us about eternal possibilities? 

Polygamy was never outlawed in the Bible. You seem to feel it has a purpose to subjugate women. Often this was the case which is why the Lord outlawed it for the Nephites. So this is not the reason the Lord allows polygamy. It is distinctly not to subjugate women. Anyway that is getting off topic. i may agree that the Church has not always lived it correctly, but that too is another topic.

I bring up the relationship between Joseph's changing conception of God the Father, his practice of polygamy,  and it's subjugation of women. There are connections, and thus ramifications of the LDS concept of God on women today.

[RevTestament]

3 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

It doesn't necessarily, but as Joseph's beliefs about God evolved from Trinitarian to the Godhead (doing so as his versions of the First Vision, Book of Mormon and other church writings changed) with God the Father having a body, he used that doctrine to institute polygamy as the New and Everlasting Covenant of divine origin.

When did Joseph Smith ever speak of God as a trinity? I don't recall him ever condoning the concept. Are you sure you're not just putting words in his mouth to make your argument "better?" I can accept that Joseph's understanding of God changed. That is the nature of learning about God I think.

35 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

I bring up the relationship between Joseph's changing conception of God the Father, his practice of polygamy,  and it's subjugation of women. There are connections, and thus ramifications of the LDS concept of God on women today.

I agree that many/most forms of polygamy have an effect of subjugating women somewhat. But you don't seem to talk about that when speaking of how good some of your Muslim acquaintances are. I am also prone to agree that the LDS concept of polygamy changed over time. Some of the members of my very first ward really upset my mother over it. As I see it, it shouldn't be a doctrine which would upset anybody. If a woman doesn't wish to live polygamy, she shouldn't consent to it, and that should be the end of it.

[Meadowchik]

11 hours ago, RevTestament said:

When did Joseph Smith ever speak of God as a trinity? I don't recall him ever condoning the concept. Are you sure you're not just putting words in his mouth to make your argument "better?" I can accept that Joseph's understanding of God changed. That is the nature of learning about God I think.

I agree that many/most forms of polygamy have an effect of subjugating women somewhat. But you don't seem to talk about that when speaking of how good some of your Muslim acquaintances are. I am also prone to agree that the LDS concept of polygamy changed over time. Some of the members of my very first ward really upset my mother over it. As I see it, it shouldn't be a doctrine which would upset anybody. If a woman doesn't wish to live polygamy, she shouldn't consent to it, and that should be the end of it.

Joseph evolved from a Trinitarian view to a Godhead view. The earlier edition of the Book of Mormon has things like "God" which in subsequent editions become "Son of God." The account of the first vision written in Joseph's hand is that of seeing the Lord, while the official version is of him seeing God the Father (flesh and bone) and His Son.  These writings, among others, demonstrate a movement away from Protestant trinitarianism and toward the LDS Godhead view.

If we are going to have a discussion on what we know of God the Father, this time in Church development seems like a critically important time to ponder, imo.

The LDS practice of polygamy subjugates women.  It did in the 1800s and it does today.  There are LDS women today who suffer because of the polygamous doctrine that still permeates church doctrine. Women are subjugated by the polygamous doctrine which still serves as a model in the temple endowment.  Personally, the elements of female subjugation did not bother me when I was endowed, but they have disturbed other women and created strife and pain for them.

This subjugation of women is still alive in the church, it's in the Proclamation of the Family and it's in the general structure of the church.

(BTW, I do bear witness of the goodness of people who are Muslim, just I have of others including Mormons when the groups they belong to are swept up in unfair generalisations.)

[Kevin Christensen]

Some very thorough and carefully contextualized takes on the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's accounts of the first vision make the case that Joseph Smith did not evolve from a Trinitarian to a Godhead view, but rather always taught a social trinity.  Granted that his followers came from conventional backgrounds, and it takes time to grasp things.  That's a human problem.

See for instance, Gardner here:

https://www.fairmormon.org/conference/august-2003/monotheism-messiah-and-mormons-book

I've also written about this in various places (http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=16&num=2&id=547), and cited other scholars who have gone through every single verse in the Book of Mormon, rather than just the handful of context free proof-texts that typically get cited when these claims come up.

And Matthew Brown here:

https://www.fairmormon.org/conference/august-2006/revised-or-unaltered-joseph-smiths-foundational-stories

And notice that Brown points out this:

Quote

This brings us to the most frequent anti-Mormon criticism about JS 1832. God the Father is obviously not mentioned as making an appearance to Joseph Smith in this First Vision account. I would like to suggest, however, that all this time we as Latter-day Saints have not recognized that God the Father’s appearance is, in fact, referred to right in this document. This has occurred, I believe, because we have been looking in the wrong place.

In the introductory remarks of JS 1832 Joseph Smith outlined precisely how he was about to proceed in the narration of his history. He mentioned that the very first incident associated with his “marvelous experience” in the Restoration was that he received “the testimony from on high.” Because of the formatting of the introductory paragraph and the structure of the text which follows it, it can be concluded with a marked degree of certainty that this testimony was connected with the First Vision. The question to ask, then, is, What was the “testimony from on high” that Joseph Smith received during the First Vision? This question is easily answered by referring to another First Vision recital given by the Prophet in November 1835. There he states that one of the two personages who appeared unto him testified that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. In JS 1838 (which is the First Vision narrative now published in the Pearl of Great Price) we learn that one of the personages testified to Joseph using the following words, “This is my beloved Son.” We may comfortably conclude from this documentary evidence that the “testimony from on high” of JS 1832 is equivalent to the phrase spoken by God the Father in JS 1838. Therefore, we may safely say that when Joseph Smith wrote the 1832 account of the First Vision the appearance of God the Father was definitely in his mind—because he obliquely refers to it. It seems that he did not make an explicit mention of this part of the story simply because he had chosen to use the apostle Paul’s experience as the main framework for that portion of his narrative—and Paul only saw Jesus Christ.

I would also mention that D&C 76, the vision of the Father and the Son reported by Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon (two witnesses, I notice) also appeared in 1832, and that none of Joseph's contemporaries made the complaint about changing from metaphysical Trinity to social Trinity.  And of course, there is the fact that in the 1832 account, where he says, the ^Lord opened the heavens to me and I saw the Lord", the first "Lord" is an insert above the line.  Had the insert been "God" or "Father", we'd have no controversy.  And the 1835 account has the Father appearing first, making the introduction and then Jesus.  And he did comment on the exact resemblance.

Few, if any, of the LDS women I know strike me as particularly subjugatable, particularly via gentleness, meekness, long-suffering, pure knowledge, and love unfeigned, which happen to be only legitimate means at hand.  Most of the fuss and anxiety concerning legal issues around marriage comes as though Jesus is primarily a lawyer, who will use the law to overwhelm and crush any personal feelings that people have about what happens in this life and the next, rather than seeing Jesus as one who will, through love and knowledge "dry all our tears."

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited May 8, 2017 by Kevin Christensen
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