ToGodorNottoGod
Member
Because after destroying all the others' scriptures and ideas, the Bible is what is left, and while it isn't perfect, its useful.... what else is there from that era?
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Questions about Christianity and Mormonism
- Thread starter Ehav4Ever
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- christianity faith mormon
And The Book of Mormon verses that quote from the Bible have the exact same errors as the KJV translation. I find that fascinating consider the Book of Mormon was supposed to be translated directly from gold plates using the power of God. Why would such a divine experience include superfluous KJV errors. It defies logic, but Mormons are blinded by their faith.
InChrist
Free4ever
I would say the answers to your questions are NO, except #4 which would be, Yes, there are negative ETERNAL consequences for someone believing in Mormonism.
The following linked video which critiques the differences between the teachings and characters of Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ may be of interest...
This is always your default argument whenever someone criticizes Mormonism. Do you ignore the possibility that non-Mormons or former Mormons might actually know a thing or two about Mormonism through study and experience?
Bree
Active Member
Jesus had 12 apostles whom he personally selected to be his representatives. The teachings of those men are found in the christian scriptures. Anything besides the scriptures found in the holy bible are not authorised by christ and therefore should not be used as a basis of Christian doctrine.
It is quite clear that mormonism contradicts the teachings of the holy bible. and for that reason alone it should not be considered to be a Godly inspired christian religion.
There are good people practicing mormonism... but they should be following the teachings of Christ if they believe themselves to be a Christian religion.
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
I would say Mormonism is to Christianity as Reform is to Judaism. Neither is a new religion, per se, but merely its own interpretation of the canonical texts. In this light, we might compare the books you note to Midrash Rabbah, the Talmud, or the Zohar. None are seminal to the religion in the sense that the Pentateuch is. All are ways of engaging the Pentateuch.
The Mormon books are ways of engaging the canonical Bible made up of the Tanakh, the Gospels, and the Apostolic Writings.
Yes Joseph smith is a prophet just as Isaiah is a prophet. And in both cases, some of their ideas are contemporary kinds of religious thought, while other of their writings are steeped in mystical jargon designed not so much to lay naked the spiritual truth, but on the contrary, to hide it from the prying eyes of the unbelievers and charlatans.
The writer(s) of the Zohar, not unlike Joseph Smith, knew that the spirit of truth must be hidden, guarded, from those who would distort it and if possible destroy it. So like Smith, the writers of the Zohar (if not Jewish midrashim in general) hid the truth in metaphorical descriptions, mythical tropes, that only the initiated could enter into in a knowing way.
Like any good faith-based practitioners, Mormons practice an initiation process that determines who will be given the keys to interpret what to the uninitiated can seem like fabulous fabrication or even silly magical mumbo jumbo. Judaism is no different. The average Jewish practitioner has very little understanding of the deeper things of the Talmud or the Zohar. To know those things requires an initiation process that weeds out all but the most faithful persons of faith.
John
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PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
Answer from Cathecism of the Catholic Church:
Throughout the ages, there have been so-called "private" revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the Magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church.
Christian faith cannot accept "revelations" that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such "revelations".
In other words: the canon is closed.Christian faith cannot accept "revelations" that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such "revelations".
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
Amen. . . . But is it your supposition that Mormonism is a new revelation that surpasses the revelation of Christ? I don't think it is. But I'm willing to accept that possibility if you make a sound argument with viable proof?
John
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
Also @John D. Brey
If I remember correctly the one big difference is that Mormons believe God the Father has a human physical body and that he was once a man and he then progressed to godhood.
In Bible (OT and NT) we read "God is spirit", "God is not a man", "I the LORD do not change."
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . And yet Jesus told his followers that when they were looking at him, Jesus, the man, they were seeing the Father: he and the Father are one and the same. . . So it seems like we shouldn't let semantics cause us to demonize one another.
John
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
It's definitely not the same. Read the first chapter in the same gospel. Logos became flesh - not the other way around.
Sand Dancer
Currently catless
Christians made their own religion too. It's not the religion of Jesus. It's the religion about Jesus.
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
I appreciate your point, and your desire to guard the faith from attempts to water it down, or change it. Nevertheless, making judgments about the true spirit of the faith, and those who are members of that spirit, is, in my opinion, very difficult, since I don't believe any particular religion or denomination (or person) is the sole possessors of the true spirit.
The Catholic church tried to kill Martin Luther for spreading ideas that today most Catholics are likely to consider undeniable parts of their faith. Similarly, I believe Mormonism protects some articles of faith that if they were better understood by most Christians would be accepted as genuine articles of faith that were lost or hidden from a broader spectrum of Christian thought.
My own spiritual father, Col. R.B. Thieme, Jr., though he was one of the best educated theologians of his day (and taught strictly from the original languages of scripture), was attacked not only by high ranking members of the Protestant branch of the faith, but was called demonic by a Catholic priest.
Concerning your point about the Word becoming flesh, rather than the flesh becoming Word, we have Jesus' statement that before Abraham was, he, Jesus, was already. Properly exegeted there are many places in the scripture that encourage us to see that although "in the flesh" we see things asymmetrically, past to future, in the true spirit of things, that carnal asymmetry doesn't necessarily exist. From a divine perspective/pearch, the past and the future following a one-way arrow/direction, is, to paraphrase Einstein, a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Paul calls Jesus the firstborn of mankind. And there's sound theology to show that he is. It can be argued, fairly persuasively, that where the virgin birth is understood in a scientific way, Jesus is ha-adam's actual firstborn even though he's obviously still born in relationship to Cain. And yet he's still born from a latter-day pregnancy and as a latter-day saint (so to say).
Understanding that, and how, Jesus could genuinely be the firstborn member of the human race, would go a long way toward suturing up the wound that occurred when Judaism and Christianity split in the first century of the current era. Which is merely a way of suggesting that we should probably be trying to pull all the pieces back together again, cure the wounds caused at the breaking apart (the καταβολη of the world), rather than scattering them further.
Who verily was foreordained before the καταβολη of the world but was manifest in these latter days for you who through him do in fact believe in God who raised him up from the dead and gave him glory that your faith and hope might be in God.
1 Peter 1:20-21.
1 Peter 1:20-21.
John
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Actual "Mormon" here clarifying actual beliefs:
- God the Spirit is a spirit without a body.
- God the Son is a spirit in a body. Today that's a glorified resurrected body, during His mortal ministry it was a mortal one, and he obviously didn't have a body before being born of Mary. He was/is divine and unchanging during all of this time.
- We are each to worship God with our spirits and in truthfulness (John 4:23-24).
The Bible alone does not specify if the God the Father is like God the Spirit (spirit with no body) or God the Son (spirit with a body). Traditional Christians go with the first option, myself and other member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints go with the second.
idea
Question Everything
Yes, The polygamous Warren Jeff to Brigham Young and the rest of the sex cults... all Christian.
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
Would you judge the apostle John as a charlatan for saying that the beast had ten horns? Or do you believe that when the anti-Christ arrives we will know him because he's born with ten horns?
Some persons would consider someone who believes the latter a tin horn which, but for one letter, would make him the beast anti-Christ.
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . Naturally, I guess, there are stains neither Tide, the blood of Christ, nor time and tide together can erase?
John
idea
Question Everything
We're all saved or the plan is incomplete and worthless... but in the meantime, Cult vs Christian ...
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
All specificity in the scripture is based on interpretation. And since interpretation is an ongoing process, all believers should probably work together in the spirit of unity trying to see deeper into the word of God.
Some interpretations are erroneous while some that look erroneous look like that merely because the understanding required to arrive at a new and deeper interpretation isn't universal yet.
For example, the Roman Catholic teaching concerning Mary ---Mariology ----is considered "Mariolatry" by most Protestant Christian denominations. And I concurred with the Protestant idea that Roman Mariology is idolatry until after decades of biblical study I found the interpretive basis for what the Roman church is trying to do through their venerative Mariology.
Now I see the Roman version of Mariology as a profound metaphor necessary to understand some incredibly complex interpretations of scripture that will eventually change the way Christians and Jews understand their texts in profound and lasting ways.
In my opinion, many of the ideas in Mormonism that traditional Christians poo poo are like Roman Mariology: concepts that at first, and second glance, appear idolatrous, stupid, or purposeless, though they guard, and promote, concepts that will be foundational to the further evolution of religious faith.
John