Does LDS Doctrine Actually Reject "Creation Ex Nihilo?"

[mfbukowski]

32 minutes ago, rodheadlee said:

A blank page isn't nothing, it's a blank page among other things that i don't have the education to describe.. I don't think there is any such thing as nothing.

There is no such thing as no thing?

I can't imagine why people would think there was can you?   It's a tautology.  No thing=no thing

A=A

~A=~A

Fairly straightforward and hard to debate methinks.

[3DOP]

5 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

There is no such thing as no thing?

I can't imagine why people would think there was can you?   It's a tautology.  No thing=no thing

A=A

~A=~A

Fairly straightforward and hard to debate methinks.

Is not the idea of nothing something? How would nothing be different from other ideas? Take Thursday for instance. Is Thursday nothing or something? I would say it is something only because it is an idea. Thursday certainly has no material existence. Are ideas things or not things?

Edited May 14, 2017 by 3DOP

[mfbukowski]

15 minutes ago, 3DOP said:

In the original creation, we hold that God creates out of nothing, and what was made was good. In the recreation, or redemption, which celebrates the happy fault of Adam, we go further. We hold that God creates out of "less than nothing", if you will. It is greater to bring good out of evil than to bring good out of nothing. At least nothing isn't bad. At least nothing isn't evil. Y'all are scandalized at Creation Ex Nihilo, but you don't know the half of it. It gets worse...from your point of view.

 

In the beginning there was evil......

I think that makes original sin rather circular based on that assumption, yes?

Not to mention it's pretty depressing.

Why would anyone want to make that assumption?  What's the benefit of that for anyone?

Remember these are all words about the unspeakable anyway.

I mean if you are going to make up stories shouldn't they be happy stories?

On the other hand Catholic guilt is a real force in the universe....   in a nice way of course.

 

Edited May 14, 2017 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

3 minutes ago, 3DOP said:

Is not the idea of nothing something? How would nothing be different from other ideas? Take Thursday for instance. Is Thursday nothing or something? I would say it is something only because it is an idea. It certainly has no material existence. Are ideas things or not things?

You gotta ask Aquinas about that one.  Sounds right up his alley!

Wittgenstein would just chuckle.

Edited May 14, 2017 by mfbukowski

[3DOP]

2 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

In the beginning there was evil......

I think that makes original sin rather circular based on that assumption, yes?

Not to mention it's pretty depressing.

Why would anyone want to make that assumption?  What's the benefit of that for anyone?

Remember these are all words about the unspeakable anyway.

How is it depressing to think that God can take worse than nothing and make it good? Without debating the facts, why would that depress anyone? I find it exhilarating.

[mfbukowski]

6 minutes ago, 3DOP said:

Is not the idea of nothing something? How would nothing be different from other ideas? Take Thursday for instance. Is Thursday nothing or something? I would say it is something only because it is an idea. Thursday certainly has no material existence. Are ideas things or not things?

Truth cannot be out there- cannot exist independently of the human mind- because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there.  The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.  Only descriptions of the world can be true or false.  The world on its own- unaided by the describing activities of human beings- cannot."   Richard Rorty- Contingency Irony and Solidarity, P 5.

[mfbukowski]

1 minute ago, 3DOP said:

How is it depressing to think that God can take worse than nothing and make it good? Without debating the facts, why would that depress anyone? I find it exhilarating.

Yeah but it sounds very Mormon actually.  If nothing is something and you "make it good" then you are organizing matter unorganized.  That means that nothing is not nothing it is something and therefore He is organizing what was already there

Your move.  

[3DOP]

8 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

You gotta ask Aquinas about that one.  Sounds right up his alley!

Wittgenstein would just chuckle.

I am not asking Aquinas. I know what he thought. I just wonder how much your fellow Mormons agree with us.

[3DOP]

4 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Yeah but it sounds very Mormon actually.  If nothing is something and you "make it good" then you are organizing matter unorganized.  That means that nothing is not nothing it is something and therefore He is organizing what was already there

Your move.  

I don't mind if it "sounds" Mormon. My goal isn't to distance myself from Mormonism. 

[clarkgoble]

18 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

That observation is key, since there is in fact no Scriptural support for creatio ex nihilo or for a god who is the only uncaused cause (prime mover), the only necessary being.  In fact the fundamental basis of modern Judeo-Christian-Muslim theology comes from Greek philosophy rather than from the Bible.  The two cannot coexist, and that is the reason for the Great Apostasy and for the Restoration of All Things.

I'm not sure I'd go that far, although that has been a popular view. I think the reality is a bit trickier since I think a strong argument could be made Joseph was influenced by platonism of certain types. To use the language in which that analysis typically gets made the problem is how Jerusalem and Athens were mixed. The Christians and some  Jews merged them in a way that put a gap in place but more importantly devalued the personhood of God. (Yes the three persons are in the Trinity but in most formulations the personhood is at best a very loose analogy and not something to take seriously) At times the more anthropomorphic elements pop up such as in Kabbalism which interestingly was a strong platonic resurgence in Judaism.

Personally I'd say that one of the necessary pre-conditions of the restoration wasn't just Protestantism with Luther and company but also the rise or renaissance platonism with Ficino, Bruno, and company leading to the rise of masonry.

The weirdness of Augustine is in how he tried to mix platonism with Christianity creating something quite unlike either IMO.

Edited May 15, 2017 by clarkgoble

[clarkgoble]

12 hours ago, Mormons Talk said:

I'm sympathetic to what you're saying.  On the other hand, we've seen in recent years, through the essays, the dangers of not closely examining the doctrinal basis for certain beliefs (e.g., race).  To say "this isn't doctrine, but it's been and being taught, so you should accept it just like doctrine" seems to just avoid the issue.  Why have doctrine? Because it provides the consensus around which a group can settle its beliefs.  The approach some seem to suggest is to have non-doctrine, but to enforce consensus around it as if it were doctrine - which really makes no sense aside from making it easy to deny the teaching if the need arises.  If an issue isn't doctrine, then there shouldn't be repercussions for discussing and advocating diverging positions on the issue.

I'm fine critiquing doctrine and its basis. In this case it really seems like a pretty solid basis. Much stronger than for many other doctrines that aren't questioned. 

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, rodheadlee said:

What is nothing?

In what sense? There's a famous argument between the philosophers Carnap and Heidegger over just that. They tended to talk past one an other since Canap only wanted to think in terms of an empty set. Whereas for Heidegger the key part was being not a thing for nothing.

[clarkgoble]

9 hours ago, Mormons Talk said:

There are two main points I'd like to make: (1) That gap is smaller than one might think in some parts of Christianity (e.g., given the doctrine of deification in the Eastern Orthodox faith);

I'm not sure that's true. Indeed I think creation ex nihilo is key for understanding why eastern Christian conceptions of deification, while sounding like Mormonism, are actually quite different. There's no shortage of theologians from the eastern tradition who point this out.

Quote

and (2) a gap most certainly exists in the Mormon tradition.Re (2):  there is, and always will be, a fundamental gap between us and God.  It was under His direction that all was organized/created.  We are His offspring. We are begotten in His image. He is our Father, and always will be.  He was full of wisdom, truth, and perfection when we were but saplings.  He will always be the Being we worship.  His glory will always, always exceed ours. We owe all things to Him, and not visa versa.  Our sin prevents us from being like Him, but even in a sinless state (I.e. Adam/Eve), we were nowhere near His equal.  Thus, a gap exists, and always will exist, even in Mormonism.

Creation ex nihilo is the theology of a certain kind of absolute ontological gap. The gap which you bring up is quite real, but is not typically considered ontological in any significant fashion.

Quote

Don't trust me on this; here's Blake Ostlers take:

Blake's theology probably comes closes to creating a gap although at the expense of most traditional doctrines of the King Follet Discourse. Effectively though he thinks only God the Father could develop to be a quasi-independent God on his own. No other pre-existent being could. Blake rejects any idea that God the Father had a father or had been in an experience like ours in any strong sense. Yet even here Blake really isn't pushing a true ontological difference. Although given his embrace of process theology that can get a bit murky as he sees God the Father in terms of Hartshornes panentheism.

I'd have to break out my books which temporarily are in storage to get into the nuances as it's been several years since we discussed the topic with each other. I tend to differ from Blake in several key areas, not the least being how to read the King Follet Discourse and Sermon in the Grove.

Also note Blake is giving a theology for Mormonism but is in no way trying to represent the mainstream theologies in Mormonism. A key and important distinction.

Quote

I next refer to a quote from Robert Millett himself, no stranger to Mormon doctrine, as found in the book "Talking Doctrine; Mormons and Evangelicals in Conversation" (2015), p.205.  "To summarize, Latter-day Saints teach that through the cleansing and transforming power of the blood of Jesus Christ, and through the sanctifying and divinizing power of the Holy Spirit, men and women may over time mature spiritually; may, as our Eastern Orthodox friends would put it (and with which we would have no argument), partake of the energies, not the essence of God Our Father, a process that is referred to variously as participation, transformation, union, intermingling, partaking, elevation, kingship, interpenetration, joint heirship, son and daughterhood, adoption, re-creation, and realization."

Rober Millet and Stephen Robinson in attempting to find common ground with our Evangelical friends often papers over a bit the important differences. And the key difference is creation ex nihlo which can make very similar doctrines have significant differences. I think they are right that Evangelical and even Catholic critics play up creation ex nihlo a bit too much. Overall we all do have a lot in common. But that doesn't make the differences any less present.

Quote

Thus, you have a situation where a current, major branch of Christianity teaches deification (Eastern Orthodoxy) that Bob Millett likens to our teaching, and where Mormonism recognizes differences between God and us that are eternal and cannot be bridged.

In short, a "gap" between us and God exists both in Christianity and Mormonism, with or without the doctrine of creation ex nihilo or the LDS doctrine of deification.

Well the gap in traditional Christianity is absolute and ontological. The gap in Mormonism is more developmental. We can never be where God is now because by the time we get there he's moved on. Whereas the traditional Christianity God's typically seen as absolutist and complete ontologically. Now there has been a recent movement called Open Theism that has some similarities to process theology. Millet, Ostler and others have embraced it a great deal as a way of finding common ground but also more importantly because it expresses their own theological commitments. However that position is fairly controversial both within Protestantism and, I'd argue, also within Mormonism despite being held by some prominent thinkers. 

[clarkgoble]

On 5/13/2017 at 3:54 PM, Mormons Talk said:

True, but the other side of the coin is that we might really like theologies that Mormonism takes no position on.

Yes, and if you come to SMPT you can see lots of papers given with just that motivation in mind.

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, 3DOP said:

I am not asking Aquinas. I know what he thought. I just wonder how much your fellow Mormons agree with us.

It's semantic nonsense.  "Is Thursday something"?

Totally arbitrary, useless, the discussion makes no difference to anybody

Does that help?   You expect Mormons to have beliefs about Thursday being a thing?

Edited May 15, 2017 by mfbukowski

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm not sure I'd go that far, although that has been a popular view.

I don't think so.  Few Mormons are capable of handling either the theological or philosophical issues.  In addition, few read Hebrew well enough to do exegesis of texts.

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

..............................................................  

Personally I'd say that one of the necessary pre-conditions of the restoration wasn't just Protestantism with Luther and company but also the rise or renaissance platonism with Ficino, Bruno, and company leading to the rise of masonry.

............................................................  

It is true that one can define Joseph Smith as a Renaissance magus as well as an authentic creature of the American Renaissance, and he is even better seen as a Romantic.  Yet, when push comes to shove, he harks back (at base) to Primitive Christianity.  As non-Mormon Ernst Benz has observed:

Quote

Regardless of how one feels about the doctrine of progressive deification, one thing is certain: Joseph Smith=s anthropology of man is closer to the concept of man in the primitive church than that of the proponents of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin, who considered the idea of such a fundamental and corporeal relationship between God and man as the quintessential heresy.^[1]

 

^[1] "Der Mensch als Imago Dei," in Eranos Jahrbuch 40 (1971), and also published in Urbild und Abbild: Der Mensch und die mythische Welt: gesammelte Eranos-Beitrage (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 326, 

Quote

Man mag zu dieser Lehre von der progressiven Vergottung stehen wie man will, eines ist sicher, Joseph Smith steht mit dieser seiner Anthropologie der altkirchlichen Anschauung vom Menschen näher als die Vorkämpfer der augustinischen Erbsündenlehre, die den Gedanken an einen so wesenhaften Zusammenhang zwischen Gott und Mensch als die eigentliche Haeresie betrachtet haben.

English version in Benz, "Imagio Dei: Man in the Image of God," in T. Madsen, ed., Reflections on Mormonism (Provo, 1978), 201-219.  Emphasis added.

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, 3DOP said:

Is not the idea of nothing something? How would nothing be different from other ideas? Take Thursday for instance. Is Thursday nothing or something? I would say it is something only because it is an idea. Thursday certainly has no material existence. Are ideas things or not things?

This is where the Peircean in me tends to part ways with Mfbukowski. I have no trouble with ideas being something - I'd call them signs. I'm not sure I'd want to say signs don't have a material existence though. Just that they are more than the mark but are inexorably tied to the object they signify and the interpretant or effect they produce.

Not quite sure what that has to do with ex nihilo though.

[clarkgoble]

Just now, Robert F. Smith said:

I don't think so.  Few Mormons are capable of handling either the theological or philosophical issues.  In addition, few read Hebrew well enough to do exegesis of texts.It is true that one can define Joseph Smith as a Renaissance magus as well as an authentic creature of the American Renaissance, and he is even better seen as a Romantic.  Yet, when push comes to shove, he harks back (at base) to Primitive Christianity.  

 

Well but then many of those elements of renaissance platonism arose out of the rediscovery and focus on elements of late antiquity including gnosticism, hermeticism and philosophy not so in capture to Augustine and company. So when Bruno likely creates masonry he's injecting into it something very much out of merkebah and heckhalot texts not to mention elements of gnosticism we as Mormonism might see as elements of truth in apostate forms of Christianity.

So I agree, but to me the key move of both the renaissance and the reformation is to bring these elements that were lost in the wilderness back into a form Joseph could be exposed to. Without both movements the restoration can't happen (IMO).

[3DOP]

34 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

It's semantic nonsense.  "Is Thursday something"?

Totally arbitrary, useless, the discussion makes no difference to anybody

Does that help?   You expect Mormons to have beliefs about Thursday being a thing?

Gently now. I made no claim. I made no assertion. I didn't say I expected anything. I said "I just wonder how much your fellow Mormons agree with us." (Aquinas about whether ideas are things or not). If it makes no difference to anybody, as you claim, you seem to be getting overly exercised about it! Are going to attack Clark Goble for not following your lead too?

 

[clarkgoble]

1 minute ago, 3DOP said:

Are going to attack Clark Goble for not following your lead too?

We actually agree on a lot. But going by our previous discussion I don't think I've yet converted him to the importance of signs nor Peirce's logic.

[3DOP]

46 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

This is where the Peircean in me tends to part ways with Mfbukowski. I have no trouble with ideas being something - I'd call them signs. I'm not sure I'd want to say signs don't have a material existence though. Just that they are more than the mark but are inexorably tied to the object they signify and the interpretant or effect they produce.

Not quite sure what that has to do with ex nihilo though.

I'm not sure what this has to do with ex nihilo either. Rod said something about nothing being nothing. Anyway, I appreciate your reply. I'm not very sure of myself when it comes to this stuff. I was just asking what seemed to me a reasonable question that might help us to see if we have the same vocabulary.

[mfbukowski]

11 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

We actually agree on a lot. But going by our previous discussion I don't think I've yet converted him to the importance of signs nor Peirce's logic.

Agreed on both!  

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I don't think so.  Few Mormons are capable of handling either the theological or philosophical issues.  In addition, few read Hebrew well enough to do exegesis of texts.

Well more going by those Mormon who actually discuss the issues. Also while many Mormons (myself included) don't read Hebrew, Egyptian or even Greek and thus can't comment on the texts, it's not hard to find discussions of those who can. So relative to the exegesis of Genesis 1 for instance and how it relates to Joseph's exegesis I usually point people to Jon Levenson's Creation and the Persistence of Evil. There Levenson, a pretty well respected scholar, argues the earliest view was that creation first off was from the midst of pre-existent materials (waters of chaos) and that creation was not a one time thing but an ongoing process continually renewed. It's a very good counterpunch for those arguing for creation ex nihilo in the Torah.

Edited May 15, 2017 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

35 minutes ago, 3DOP said:

Gently now. I made no claim. I made no assertion. I didn't say I expected anything. I said "I just wonder how much your fellow Mormons agree with us." (Aquinas about whether ideas are things or not). If it makes no difference to anybody, as you claim, you seem to be getting overly exercised about it! Are going to attack Clark Goble for not following your lead too?

 

Because of our previous relationship etc.  I take your posts seriously and try to answer them seriously as a kind of responsibility I feel.  

But sorry this was nonsense to me.

I just wish we could actually communicate for 5 minutes.

But poor Clark is pretty good at deciphering my impenetrable prose.   He just likes talking about words pointing to stuff I can't experience.   Poor words, their little arms are getting tired pointing so much.

I keep looking for what they're pointing at but I guess I just need new glasses.  

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

We actually agree on a lot. But going by our previous discussion I don't think I've yet converted him to the importance of signs nor Peirce's logic.

Poor little signs.  I see them marching around protesting but there is nothing on those placards.  

But you're a good guy even if you think you can see what's not there.

Dang realty.  Keeps hiding behind mirrors. You think it's there but then you look closer and all you see is yourself looking back at you.

 

Edited May 15, 2017 by mfbukowski