Jbdf

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Everything posted by Jbdf

  1. As soon as I spotted the post at M*, I decided to rush over here to say, Congratulations, Rameumptom!
  2. To add to the list of early LDS commentary on the identity of Melchizedek, I offer a quote from W. W. Phelps' 1852 Deseret Almanac, p. 38: "Shem (Melchizedek) ordained under the hand of Noah." For what it's worth, Martin Luther also believed that Melchizedek was Shem: "Thus I am pleased with the general opinion that Melchizedek is Shem, because there was no greater patriarch at that time, especially in spiritual matters. By common consent the churches and the people honored him with this name and called him [Melchizedek], which means righteous king, because of the office he held. He held both offices, that of king and that of priest. And although he did nothing inordinate in the government but managed all affairs righteously, he gained a reputation for righteousness because of his service in the church; for he taught the forgiveness of sins through the future Seed of the woman. Since the world either had no knowledge of this doctrine or considered it worthless and persecuted it, Shem alone was called a righteous king. This holy and venerable old man the people of Salem chose to be their king" (Luther's Works 2.382) As for Jewish sources, it's said in the early medieval Targum Pseudo-Jonathan that "Malka Zadika, who was Shem bar Noah, the king of Yerushalem, came forth to meet Abram, and brought forth to him bread and wine". Also, Jerome - in a letter I've found in Latin but can't find rendered into English - appears to accept that Melchizedek is Shem, which he says is a prevaling Jewish opinion in his day in the year 398.
  3. Jbdf

    ;)

    Welcome to the forum, LollyPop! It's very nice to have you here.
  4. And in this instance, several of your 'facts' have been corrected with information gleaned from serious study of the patristic period. That simply isn't a faithful representation of what happened. The council did not simply make something up arbitrarily. They did not manufacture the nature of God. A challenge had been raised to the faith by the beliefs of a church elder from Egypt; bishops gathered to investigate the issue, hear the arguments from both sides, and discern what accorded best with the faith that had been handed down to them. One can believe that they judged rightly, or one can believe that they judged wrongly. My studies have led me to affirm that they indeed judged rightly. Nor, for that matter, are 'from a council' and 'from God' mutually exclusive, any more than 'from the First Presidency' and 'from God' are mutually exclusive. (If God can speak through a prophet, why can't he, in principle, speak through a council? And if he speaks through a council, why should anyone be faulted for listening to the council?) And, as I've repeated several times before and demonstrated clearly, some form of the doctrine of the Trinity was definitely already around before the Council of Nicaea. What needed to be done was to add further clarity in such a manner as to clearly exclude alternative ways of fleshing out or distorting the church's teaching. For my part, I accept it not merely on the basis of the council's authority, but by taking the respective positions and comparing them with the Scriptures to see what holds up best, with a proper translation from one conceptual idiom to another. It's true, most ostensibly 'orthodox' Christians do not have a clear idea of what the doctrine of the Trinity really is. Even more unfortunately, neither do some clergy. The Trinity is indeed a mystery, in a certain sense. First, because it is something that is revealed to us at last under the New Covenant but was seen at best dimly and from afar before. And second, it is one of the "wonderful things in the law of God, things we may admire, but are never able to comprehend" (Evening and Morning Star, July 1832, p. 19); insofar as God's ways are beyond ours, so we lack the capacity to fully understand him as he is, though we may partly understand him through reason in addition to that which he has revealed. So we can indeed begin to understand it, I would argue, but we must do so humbly and with an awareness that on this side of the age to come, there's no chance any of us can finally dust of our hands with the exclamation, "Well, glad we finally understand God as well as he understands himself!"
  5. Does anyone here know anything about where the account of this dream came from before it got incorporated into History of the Church? Looking through an old LDS almanac compiled by W. W. Phelps, I found a rather different one listed as Joseph's last dream (which would probably be actually his second or third last dream): While I was at Jordan's in Iowa the other night, I dreamed that myself and my brother Hyrum went on board of a large steamboat, lying in a small bay, near the great ocean. Shortly after we went on board there was an "alarm of fire," and I discovered that the boat had been anchored some distance from the shore, out in the bay, and that an escape from the fire, in the confusion, appeared hazardous; but, as delay was folly, I and Hyrum jumped overboard, and tried our faith at walking upon the water. At first we sank in the water nearly to our knees, but as we proceeded we increased in faith, and were soon able to walk upon the water. On looking towards the burning boat in the east, we saw that it was drifting towards the wharf and the town, with a great flame and clouds of smoke; and, as if by whirlwind, the town was taking fire, too, so that the scene of destruction and horror of the frightened inhabitants was terrible. We proceeded on the bosom of the mighty deep and were soon out of sight of land. The ocean was still; the rays of the sun were bright, and we forgot all the troubles of our Mother Earth. Just at that moment I heard the sound of a human voice, and, turning round, saw my brother Samuel H. approaching towards us from the east. We stopped and he came up. After a moment's conversation he informed me that he had been lonesome back, and had made up his mind to go with me across the mighty deep. We all started again, and in a short time were blest with the first sight of a city, whose gold and silver steeples and towers were more beautiful than say I had ever seen or heard of on earth. It stood, as it were, upon the western shore of the mighty deep we were walking on, and its order and glory seemed far beyond the wisdom of man. While we were gazing upon the perfection of the city, a small boat launched off from the port, and, almost as quick as thought, came to us. In an instant they took us on board and saluted us with a welcome, and with music such as is not on earth. The next scene, on landing, was more than I can describe: the greeting of old friends, the music from a thousand towers, and the light of God himself at the return of three of his sons, soothed my soul into a quiet and a joy that I felt as if I was truly in heaven. I gazed upon the splendor; I greeted my friends. I awoke, and lo, it was a dream! While I meditated on such a marvelous scene, I fell asleep again, and behold I stood near the shore of the burning boat, and there was a great consternation among the officers, crew and passengers of the flaming craft, as there seemed to be much ammunition or powder on board. The alarm was given that the fire was near the magazine, and in a moment, suddenly, it blew up with a great noise, and sank in deep water with all on board. I then turned to the country east, among the bushy openings, and saw William and Wilson Law endeavoring to escape from the wild beasts of the forest, but two lions rushed out of a thicket and devoured them. I awoke again. From William W. Phelps, Almanac for the Year 1863: Being the Thirty Fourth Year of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Great Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret News, 1862), 28-29.
  6. I have read both the Nicene Creed and the Quicunque vult many times - in Greek and Latin respectively, as well as in translation. I have also studied patristics so as to have a background against which to understand the development of such creedal formulations. Again, the English word "beings" is singularly unhelpful here. The Nicene Creed does allow that the Father and the Son are two distinct persons, but also affirms that they are homoousios, which within a strongly monotheistic framework is an affirmation of the particular constitutive components that were under challenge in the Arian controversy. (If you're indeed saying, as you seem to be, that the Nicene Creed is actually incompatible with Trinitarianism, then I fear you may wish to do more extensive research on what Trinitarianism actually is.) As for the alleged post-Nicene origins of the doctrine of the Trinity, it may help you to be aware that in the third century, Novatian wrote a treatise called... On the Trinity. Similarly prior to the Council of Nicaea, Gregory Thaumaturgus' Declaration of Faith affirms a "perfect Trinity - in glory and eternity and sovereignty neither divided nor estranged". And, of course, in the third century Tertullian wrote his treatise Against Praxeas, in which he spoke of the one and only God as being both 'Unity' and 'Trinity', saying that the three persons Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are nevertheless one God. All of this occurred decades before the Council of Nicaea. I never said that the Nicene Creed established the doctrine of the Trinity. What I said was that the Council of Nicaea made clarifications in philosophical terminology and was mainly concerned to explicitly rule out a rising misconception of the Trinity - namely, the Arian distortion. You seem to have tacitly granted that "Godhead" is not the biblical term for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit taken together, though the few times I know it to be used in biblical translations, it frequently renders words like theotetes, which refers to the state of being divine, and not to the three persons of the Trinity as a collectivity. As for your critique of the Trinitarian formula, well, you may need to articulate it a bit more clearly and grammatically. It seems that you're making a charge of contradiction. I would disagree, as would hundreds and hundreds of incredibly astute philosophers and theologians from the past 1700 years. Nevertheless, you're quite free to think it incoherent if you like, but what ought not to be done is to misrepresent the facts.
  7. Different tree - see Genesis 2:9 ("In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil") As I read the LDS version of that story, Lucifer failed to appreciate how crucial free agency is for growth and flourishing. Some of this is a bit less than accurate. The 'Athanasian Creed' (originally known as the Quicunque vult from its first two Latin words) was a later fifth- or sixth-century document that was not endorsed by any ecumenical council and in fact is not used by the Eastern Orthodox Church because it explicitly affirms a point about the Holy Ghost that they deny. When the 'Athanasian Creed' says that one must remain true to the catholic faith in order to be saved, it means that one has to accept the universally held faith of the entire church, which was believed to be inherited from the apostles and ultimately from Christ himself. (So this is analogous to a Latter-day Saint saying that in order to be exalted, one must be a member in good standing of the Church which means following the Prophet.) The 'Athanasian Creed' is also not the source of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Latin word trinitas was already being used to describe the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the third century AD, even before the Council of Nicaea. The Nicene Creed was a statement of faith meant to counter a belief that essentially said that Jesus had been created out of nothing and was not 'on the same playing field', as it were, with the Father. (The Council of Nicaea also resolved a few other controversies, such as when to celebrate Easter/Pascha, and Latter-day Saints technically follow its decisions on that matter just like Protestants and Roman Catholics do; Jehovah's Witnesses, however, reject what the Council of Nicaea said about that too.) Also, the word "God" can be used to refer to the Trinity as a 'whole' or to any of its members; the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and they are one God rather than three gods. So when Jesus is called the 'Son of God', that has never been intended to mean that Jesus is the Son of the Trinity; it has always been intended by Trinitarians to mean that Jesus is the Son of the Father, who is the one God (though not in such a way as to exclude Jesus from also being the one God). This is by no means "breaking up that trinitarian belief", since it's exactly what Trinitarians have been saying for well over 1500 years. What John 1:1 shows is more properly that the Father and the Son are two persons, which is completely compatible with what Trinitarians believe. The Father is not the same person as the Son. It's best to avoid the word "being" entirely these days, I think, since that word is being used quite differently by many people these days than it was once. As for the term "Godhead", that is an English word and also does not translate any Hebrew or Greek word that refers to the persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost taken together, whether or not we've come to use it that way; so to say that 'Godhead' is the "biblically correct" term is not quite right. After all, let's not forget that even an early LDS periodical said that it is "of great weight and moment" to "understand and believe" the "doctrine of the Trinity" (The Evening and the Morning Star, July 1832, p. 19). And whether or not contemporary rabbinic Jews would agree that Trinitarianism is monotheistic (Trinitarianism is either monotheistic and coherent or else monotheistic and incoherent, but definitely monotheistic in either case), I would personally add that Trinitarianism fits quite well with Second Temple Jewish monotheism (since Trinitarianism is ultimately the very Jewish affirmation that YHWH is the one God with his Word and his Spirit), but that's a bit of another issue. As for Jehovah's Witnesses, their beliefs about the 'Godhead' are as Rameumptom described. (I'd add that they also bear a very close similarity to the incorrect teachings that the Council of Nicaea officially rejected.) For Jehovah's Witnesses, who are unipersonal monotheists, there is only one true God, Jehovah, the Father. Jesus Christ, the Son, was his first and only direct creation out of nothing. The Father then used the Son as an instrument through whom to create everything else that exists. Before coming to earth, Jesus was known as the archangel Michael. At the right time in history, the archangel Michael's "life-force" was transferred into the womb of Mary to be henceforth known as Jesus. After Jesus was 'impaled on a torture stake' (Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe these days that there was a crossbar on the device on which Jesus was executed), he was later 'resurrected', by which they mean that after completely ceasing to exist after death, he was re-created as an immaterial spirit without a body, just as Jehovah's Witnesses believe that he was before he came to earth. So for Jehovah's Witnesses, Jesus is technically no longer a human person, but rather a 'spirit-creature'. (They also believe that 144,000 devout believers have been chosen to similarly be 'resurrected' as 'spirit-creatures' and taken to heaven, whereas all other Jehovah's Witnesses look forward to having a bodily resurrection and remaining on earth in a paradise state.) For Jehovah's Witnesses, the Holy Ghost (for them, "holy spirit") is just a way of talking about God's power and "active force"; this 'holy spirit' for them isn't a person, but rather God's power, akin to electricity.
  8. I read Brigham Young: American Moses the other year. :) I don't remember as many of the details as I'd like, but I do think that Leonard Arrington presented a mostly balanced (maybe with a slight positive slant, which I can't say I fault) and well-informed picture of Brigham Young. It was a very good read, and I look forward to going back to it someday.
  9. I had the same experiences when I experimented with Firefox in the past, so you're not alone there. So far it seems to be working better than IE this time around - maybe due to respective updates, I dunno - so I'm hoping it keeps working fine. But, unlike IE, it hasn't been crashing on me five times a day yet.
  10. I was still using IE until last week. Then I just couldn't take all the problems anymore. I never thought I'd say it, but now it's smooth sailing with Firefox.
  11. Howdy and welcome, Thomas60! I'm not LDS myself, so I'll let some of the LDS members here lead off with their thoughts on the issues you raised. I'm one of the forum's resident Evangelicals (and an 'intellectually grounded one' at that ). It's good to have you here! I'd love to hear more at some point about how you go about studying various pertinent issues.
  12. *waves* Welcome, Da Zebra! My girlfriend is slowly convincing me to be willing to read Austen's work...
  13. I'm listening to it from the NPR site now. (Heh, I think this is the first time I've ever really found NPR useful for anything. Cool!)
  14. PC is correct; The Wittenburg Door is a (now-defunct, unfortunately) Christian satire periodical along the lines of The Onion.
  15. Welcome to the site, Yvette! :)
  16. As I think I've mentioned elsewhere, right now I'm beginning to read Parley P. Pratt's forceful 1837 book A Voice of Warning and Instruction to All People, Containing a Declaration of the Faith and Doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Commonly Called Mormons. This book is actually available online for viewing or for download here, courtesy of BYU. (In 1839, Pratt released a revised second edition, so if you'd prefer to check into that, it's here. But I'm reading the original.) So far I'm just through the preface, but the subsequent table of contents is as follows: On Prophesy Already FulfilledOn the Fulfilment of Prophesy Yet FutureThe Kingdom of GodThe Book of Mormon - Origin of the American Indians, &c.A ProclamationThe Resurrection of the Saints, and the Restoration of All Things Spoken by the ProphetsThe Dealings of God with All Nations in Regard to RevelationThe Contrast Between the Doctrine of Christ, and the False Doctrine of the Nineteenth CenturyI'm hoping to post some thoughts here as I work through it, and if anyone else is up for reading along, please, by all means! So far in the preface, Pratt has mostly dealt with the persecutions faced by the Latter-day Saints of his day and portrayed the Church as being at war with pretty much the entire world. Pratt's very eloquent, that's for certain.
  17. It's not just that he "looks at porn"; from what texasmom7 has shared, it's that he has a deeply entrenched, longstanding pattern of infidelity (flagrant and excessive pornography use, building intense connections with other women, representing himself online as single and looking, etc.) and callousness, without significant efforts towards lasting repentance and without a great deal of concern for the ramifications of his behavior towards his wife and his children. Given how long this has been a recurring problem for them, I doubt very much that any decision texasmom7 makes would be a "snap decision" at this point. Reconciliation and restoration are certainly better than separation where possible, but if that doesn't work, the Scriptures (nor simple practicality) do not forbid her from doing the hard thing and breaking it off, for the benefit of all parties involved. And at this point, it sounds like her husband's heart may be hardened so that almost nothing less would be able to get the message across, as sorrowful as that is.
  18. (I heard this one from a guy a while back, and I hope it hasn't been posted here already.) Did you hear about the dyslexic hippie who took LDS instead of LSD? ....He went on a mission instead of a trip!