[Non-LDS view of God]

Aren't fear and faith opposites?

Depends on the particular sense in which one means either word. "Faith", e.g., has both the sense of "trust", and the sense of "true-heartedness". "Fear", too, can mean the terror involved in running from a bear, or the sense of wonder involved in contemplating a Gothic arch.

When it comes to the "negative" sense of fear, holy John tells us the one thing that can cast it out. To wit: perfect love. Well, is your love perfect? Has it no more growth to do? Does it fit to the last whit the description John gives of it? If not, there is still good reason for fear to remain unoutcast. :)

[Non-LDS view of God]

We may not agree on these matters, and we may see much that is good in each other, but these matters matter.  God matters.  If He is real, and if He cares, then He would want us to know Him--as He really is.  There may be some nuances of difference that are permissible, given our limited vision.  Nevertheless, I celebrate doctrine--teaching.  It is important.  These conversations are important.  It's beautiful that we have them, quite acceptable that we come to impasses.  We need not be reconciled on them.  We cannot be--unless there are conversions, of course. 

Every day we out to convert our lives a little more to Christ's. Or, rather better put, each day we ought to allow Christ to convert our lives a little more into his own. :)

[Non-LDS view of God]

 

As a child in the Catholic Church I had an idea of a pre-mortal life.  As a result, I was strapped into my chair and re-educated as to that belief.

Sort of.

So I like the idea here.

The Catholics do pray.  But they recite approved prayers, over and over.  Ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers.  It is really more an empty chant than a prayer.

All I can say here is that I've not found the traditional prayers of the Church to be empty. Your mileage may vary, wot wot. Having said that, it is truly sad when all a person does is mumble off the words of a prayer by rote. That isn't prayer, I agree. Still, put it to music, and you have a song, and it seems like no one of any religious persuasion has much of a problem humming off a song by rote. Maybe there is a blind spot here?   

 

Who was it that said prayer is meant to have more effect on the pray-er rather than God.

I don't know. God, in his eternity, has always accounted for the prayers of his children, whenever and wherever they may be. He isn't "effected" by them as such, since to be effected is a change, but God's everlasting Act has within it the knowledge of every prayer that would ever be uttered. God, therefore, gives them ear in his providence, and has from eternity seen to it that every prayer will receive its proper answer. If, as I ought, I pray today, God has known those prayers from everlasting, and from everlasting has had with him his answer to them.

 

When I was a child in the Catholic Church, word came down from on high, Rome, I guess, that the Holy Ghost would no longer be called the Holy Ghost, but now would be called the Holy Spirit.

Nah, not Rome. It would have been the American episcopal conference. It is probably helpful to note that "Ghost" and "Spirit" mean the same thing. Modern English lacks a large number of verb-forms of "ghost", yet for some reason has quite a few verbal forms of the Latinate "spirit", like, "inspire", "respire", "aspire", "expire", etc. The general habit of episcopal conferences has been to adapt theological terms to the vernacular as it is spoken, rather than amending the vernacular where it is lacking. So we say, "Theology", and not "Godlore", though the latter really is a good Englishing of the former.  

Truth be told, I would love to see English find its own footing again, so that we can say things like, "The gast begasteth heartily, aye, mickel in yon trees, lads." We're rather too comfortable in our Anglo-Frankish hybrid, though, even if it lacks internal consistency due to its hodgepodge nature.

 

I also remember going to the public school and praying.  Until they ended that.

Ah, you, then, are from the days of yore! Hail! I am a younger soul, and have more bare a store of memories.

 

I think what I see here is a distinction without a difference.  Don't all Christians see the same God, merely thru' different interpretations, like the bible?

I have to say that I think the differences between Christians are a bit more dire than all that. For instance, as a Catholic I do not believe in Sola Scriptura; I believe the Bible has God for its author, but I also believe the Sacred Tradition of God's family has God as its author. An heir to the Reformation would think this ill-advised. Mind you, I think things like this can be probed out, if in the spirit of trust and friendship Christians share in dispassionate and prayerful dialogue. Nevertheless, they are important things.

 

Who said that if we were all to look upon Jesus, we would each see a different person.

I'm not sure. I can't say I've ever heard that before. It certainly describes well the feeling one gets from every book that comes out about the "Really Real This Time Historical Jesus, Because Everything You Know is Wrong".

 

dc

 

[Non-LDS view of God]

This was a double post of the one below. My apologies.

[Non-LDS view of God]

Good Afternoon pugiofidei! =)

 

This is what I understand you to be saying:

 

God, who is not a thing, has an idea of Himself that is perfect, this perfect, infinite idea of God's self is the Son, Jesus Christ?

 

-Finrock

Provided we are working from mutually understood definitions, yes on all counts.

A "thing" is participated being--a thing which has a part in being, but does not have the essence "being". For instance, a horse is, it exists, but its existence is not the same as its essence, which might be roughly stated as, "A four-legged, plant-eating maned beast, with a straight-haired tail, one hoof to each foot, and a staggering power to run swiftly." Its essence is not, "The act of self-standing being". The essence of the horse and its existence are two different things. This can further be ably demonstrated by removing a horse's leg. This one horse becomes three-legged, but that does not make a horse a three-legged thing. A horse, being made of matter, is able to exist in a state other than its essence. 

But then, this is fairly close to the definition of matter: matter is something that can become something else. A green apple can become a red one. A red one can (with some loss) become a human, should a human come along and eat it.

And, of course, God cannot have an imperfect idea. For God to know himself is for him to pass on His entire nature to the Logos. What's more, since God is an everlasting Father, there was never a time in which the Son was not. The Son, as the Logos of the Father, is perfect, and therefore exhausts, so to speak, the entire mind of God. Nothing more can be said--which is why there is only one Logos.

What's more, because both Father and Son are perfect, and it is the nature of perfection to love goodness, they each love one another infinitely. The common Will of both sighs, with a great heaving sigh of reckless love, the divine being. Love is, remember, the act of gifting oneself for the sake of the Other's good. When Father and Son yield to one another their common Being, they hold nothing back--otherwise it would be imperfect love. This Love, therefore, is all that each of them is--omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, utterly infinite, falling short in nothing. This Third, this mutual spiration of Father and Son is, therefore, also God--the Holy Ghost. 

 

[Non-LDS view of God]

 

Again, I apologize for any sub-optimal word choices.

Thou besorrowest yon quethes thou pickest nether-best?  No fear! You speak mighty well, especially as judged by internet standards. Never mind. Nothing should be judged by internet standards.

 

So do not see God so much as a person or Father, but more as a wellspring of time/matter/etc?  

 

The two, I would say, are not mutually exclusive. No, in truth, I should go further: the life of God consists in Fatherhood. Any created fatherhood, such as exists among the children of men, is more or less analogical to God's eternal fatherhood. God cannot not be father, any more than he can know less than all things.The question arises as to why, and that is certainly worth looking into. Consider, first, the two main workings of "gast", or "spirit"; "God is spirit", as we learn at the feet of old John the Gospelman.  What deeds do a spirit do? The nature of spirit is to love and to know.

Love is to will the good of another as other, and also has the characteristic of being an act of self-donation--lover gives himself over to the beloved one. Now, God has no bounds on his power of love. And what does he love? "Man" might be a good answer, and it would be true. Aye, thanks be to God, it is true. However, God is infinite, and man is finite. The most seemly object of infinite love is not a finite thing, but an infinite thing. The conclusion we must reach is that God loves his infinite self infinitely. But in order to do so, he must know himself, and again, this must be infinitely. This perfect self-knowledge we call "Logos", or "Word". This word is "with God", and therefore does not, as a human word does, pass from utterance.

The idea of having a son and of having a word (or mental word, i.e., "idea") of oneself are related in this aspect of passing on a likeness. You now are sitting in a chair, I assume. You have a certain "word" in your mind, a certain "idea" of what it is for a thing to be a chair. More specifically, you have an idea of what it means for a thing to be the very chair upon which you are sat. That idea, that "word", falls somewhat short of the thing itself. It allows you to identify it, but it is not identical to the thing. With God this cannot be; his Act of Knowing is perfect. What he knows cannot fall short in any way from the thing itself. What, then, do we say of God's mental word of Himself? To wit: it is everything that God is, everlasting, almighty, all-knowing, filling every place everywhere. We therefore must call "it" he; he, the Word, is God.

By eternally speaking the Word that is himself, God eternally passes his likeness onto another. What is the name of the act of passing one's likeness onto another? Fatherhood. What is the act of receiving said likeness? Sonship.  We therefore call this other "the Son". God is an everlasting Father.    

 

By what mechanism were such things taught to you by your faith?  Were there any particular "light bulb" moments?  

 

Well, I went through a rather stellar RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation For Adults) program. Beyond that, the Church has seen to it that her catechisms and the works of her doctors have stayed in print. As for "light bulb" moments, I'd say the first time Fr. Rollie described the Blessed Trinity to me was one of those.

 

Can you elaborate on "holy awe"?  And how it would protect you against heresy?

 

Imagine you were walking in the park and a herd of Mammoths stormed by in front of you, trumpeting and being otherwise majestic and whatnot. Now, my first reaction would, I think, be dumbfounded silence. I mean, what could one possibly say that would add anything to what was going on? Maybe you'd react the same way. On the other hand, maybe you'd be more vocal. In the final analysis, the effect of the event on your emotional state would likely be one of awe. Holy awe, or reverence, is like this, but dialled up to 11.

 

Heresy, if we take the word back to its root, is the act of pulling out a single thread from the tapestry of the faith, and holding it up as though it were the entire tapestry. It is, to quote Chesterton, the tyranny of one idea. Broad knowledge of the Godhead allows a man to step back and see the tapestry as a whole, or at least to see enough of it that a single beautiful thread will no longer be an adequate snare.

 

 

 

[LDS approach to the problem of contingency]

Intelligence, spirit, and element exist. They do not exist because of something, they exist because there is existence. These are the essential properties of existence. The necessary conditions of existence or of there being something, are intelligence, spirit, and element. That there is existence is the only thing that can be. There is not such a thing as no existence. "Nothing" is absurd.

 

-Finrock

Many thanks for the reply! Other than not knowing what you mean by "element", I think I agree. The question, though, is why "nothing" is absurd. Upon what grounds does one posit its absurdity? I have my own way of answering the question, but was interested in what the Mormon way is. It seems that there are a diversity of views here, which fact answers well to my interest.

[Non-LDS view of God]

Your ways of thinking are... very different than what I am used to.  I wish to understand your thoughts better (if you don't mind).  Disclaimer-- I mean no offense in any of this, and apologize for any sub-optimal word choices.

 

Your explanation is strange to me, but does it make sense to you?  Or do you feel that God is simply 200% unknowable and you'll never get it?  

The former. :) There is a limit to knowledge, but that which can be known, can really be known. I admit I don't know the exact mechanism by which eternity and time interact. Time, however, is a measure of movement and change, which are themselves the processes of a thing stopping its act of being what it is (for example, sitting) to become what it can be (for example, standing up). It is concomittant with matter/energy, and cannot be split off from it. Destroy matter and time goes with it. We have it on God's own word that he doesn't change, which necessarily implies that he is atemporal.  

 

How did you come to these thoughts?

 

Well, first and foremost they are what my faith teaches me. On the other hand, I think I'd hold the same opinions even if I weren't a Christian, since they can be deduced "by the things that are made", if I may invoke St. Paul.

 

How does this understanding impact your life today?

It informs my prayer, keeps me in a state of holy awe, and (I believe) shields me against heresy. Having said that, valuing knowledge because it has a practical application is veerrrry much an effect of the Via Moderna and its sister, the scientific revolution.  No worries; I'm not being critical. However, my own approach to gaining knowledge has been from the standpoint of contemplation. I want to know, because existence is the object of knowledge, and existence comes from God. One cannot love what one does not know, and knowing is ordered to loving. Outside of the cheer of a richer experience of God and the world which He by His cunning and craft has made, I seek no usefulness from knowledge. It is not a tool to wield. It a greenyard full of golden blooms to bask in. 

[LDS approach to the problem of contingency]

Hi pugiofidei, and welcome to the forums!

Many thanks!

 

Before I answer your specific questions, it will be of benefit to touch on some Mormon history / philosophical background--

 

The entire modern Mormon church was founded by an uneducated 14 y.o. farm boy who took God at His word when He said "If any of yea lack wisdom, let him ask of God." (James 1:5).  The farm boy then went out to the woods, and has Christ and the Father literally appear before him in answer to his sincere question (more on that: http://www.mormon.org/faq/the-first-vision).   

 

These simple beginnings influence modern-day Mormon philosophy in that--

 

1) Official Mormon theology favors simple words used by the people, rather than a collegiate approach.

 

Understandable. Part of the issue is not that the ideas are complicated, but the words. Take, for example, the statement I made above about the parts of a thing with composition actualizing the whole. This is really an idea that a child can understand--my 6 year old son does, after all. Say we are talking about a cat. A cat is a body made of more than one part, spread out in space. Its head is in one place, its tail in another. In the middle is the body. Take that middle part away, and the whole thing stops being a cat. The parts cause the cat to be a cat.

My own manner of speaking, however, is second nature to me; it is what I grew up with

 

 

 It is sincerely held that the great things of God are simple, and can understood by the young, uneducated, and college educated equally.  While you can get a college degree in Mormon theology (and this could be quite a good thing), it makes you no more greater than the janitor (who might actually be your local bishop).

 

This is a point of difference, certainly, though not a vast one. My own tradition would with gusto agree that a devout unread hunter-gatherer walking in the light of faith may be holier than the most erudite haunter of theological tomehalls. In this paradigm, much of who and what God is can be known, and known with certainty without a deeply theological approach. On the other hand, God's brightness is deep, and the light of His pure intellection can dazzle even the sharpest mind among the Seraphim.

 

2)  Mormons do believe in continuing public revelation to all-- that God has yet "yet [to] reveal many great and important things to the Kingdom of God" (link: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/a-of-f/1.9?lang=eng).  There is no official Mormon catechism covering every little detail, because we simply don't know everything.  And if a Mormon does have a question, they are encouraged to pray and take that query directly to the Lord Himself.

 

Aye, approaching a sublime question about God without having recourse to his companionship would be highly inadvisable.

 

The exact nature of God is not something we fully understand at this time (background point #2).  Truthfully, it's something I doubt we can fully understand as finite creatures grasping at the infinite.  So there is no official statement specifically on this issue. I can refer you to the official Mormonism 101 manual on the subject (https://www.lds.org/manual/gospel-principles/chapter-1-our-father-in-heaven?lang=eng).  Note, in this case I say "official" in that the manual is written/published by the Church for teaching of classes; I do not say it's "official" in any sense of infallibility.  

Many thanks!

 

I would like to address your question specifically (speaking just as myself), but I confess I am a bit confused on your specific direction.  I will say that God did create this entire world, first spiritually and then temporally (this is official Mormonism).

Could you describe to me the distinction between "spiritually" and "temporally" in this particular context?

 Also, all this are done according the His will and His eternal principles/truths (also official Mormonism).  Beyond that... could you rephrase your question?

 

Imagine standing in front of a line of gears, all turning. This is, for the sake of this illustration, "existence" in its entirety. Each gear turns the next, and the whole line seems to extend forever in both directions. If you look at the gear closest to you, you can easily explain why it is turning. So, too, the next, and so, too, the one before. Now, whether one follows this line to the end and finds a giant gear (call it the "God Gear") that seems to be the first in line, or whether the whole gearline actually extends infinitely in both directions, an unanswered question still remains. To wit: why is there a row at all? Why isn't there nothing? If there is a giant gear causing the movement of the rest, the cause of the movement might seem to come from within the "existence" in question, but that would be an illusion, since the movement and sheer existence of the large gear remains irrational. If there is no such gear, and the gearline goes on forever to the left and to the right, it is more immediately obvious that the cause of the motion of the whole is utterly and irrevocably outside of visible system.  

 

There are official Mormon beliefs, but again many things we don't know.  When it comes to those things we don't know, individual Mormons are free to have individual interpretations, and just agree to disagree (as there is no official revelation on the matter).   

 

Ironically though, predestination (in the Calvinist sense) is a topic that is covered by official Mormon doctrine and thoroughly rejected: all men will have equal opportunity to accept Christ (in this life or the next) and whether or not a person accepts the Good News is 100% their choice.  God does not pre-assign a person to reject Him.

In my own tradition, there are only two posited as known here: (1) a person is fully free to choose or reject the Gospel, and (2) God has predestined those who make the positive choice. Double predestination is rejected; none are predestined for hell. Beyond this, the method of making the paradox sensical is an open arena. 

[Non-LDS view of God]

In traditional Catholic thought, God is that being of which the essence is, "to be". He is not a "thing", as such; it isn't as though one can say, "There's the cat, there's the cloud, there's the moon, and there's God." He is, rather, the necessary precondition without which nothing exists. He is immutable--which is to say, he does not change, and cannot, since change is possible only with things that lack something.

E.g., if I move from where I am now to a location two yards away, it is because I do not now have that location, and must change to gain it. Likewise, I must lose my present location in order to gain the other. I am, therefore, mutable; there is within me the capacity to change.

I ought to note, though, that within my own communion the view of Duns Scotus exists, which posits a single category, "being", and makes God the highest instance of that category. This is called the "univocivity of being", and is the first part of the "Via Moderna" that began taking shape in the late 13th century. Scotus' view is not widely held today, though; the "Via Antiqua" is far more prevelant, which sees all created being as participated being, sharing somewhat in the great "to be" that is God, though not pantheistically. God is God, creation is creation, and these are two fundamentally distinct ways of existing. 

Another way to put it--which is rather close to the way God Himself put it to Moses--is that God simply and plainly "is". He is "isness".

Taken by itself, I acknowledge that this view seems to make God seem a bit distant and alien. Having said that, a full theological description of man would likely make man himself seem distant and alien. The above really implies more than it says; it implies God is a singular Act of Knowledge, Love, and Power. We finite beings encounter this Act as it relates to us in a particular slice of time, making us experience it as an unfolding series of individual acts.

For instance, once my son had not yet been born. Now he is. From my finite standpoint, I experience this a change in God's activity; at this one time, God had not yet created my son. Then he changed to the state of having created my son. This isn't the truth as it exists in and of itself, though. It is merely the way in which I, a time-bound soul, encounter the truth.  God hasn't changed; His created reality has merely changed its particular relationship to him.

[LDS approach to the problem of contingency]

From an "official" standpoint, Mormonism just doesn't really do theology at the philosophical level you seem to be talking about. There are lots of individual Mormons who have the philosophical background to engage on these sorts of issues; but as an institution the church generally prefers to emphasize the text of the scriptures received to date and the practical applications thereof.

I see. Would that then place the question into the same sort of position that Thomist and Molinist approaches to the problem of predestination have within my own communion? That is, some two Mormons might, in their probing of the problems involved, come to two mutually incompatible conclusions, and yet still both remain safely within the bounds of LDS orthodoxy?

[LDS approach to the problem of contingency]

That depends on what your definition of "is" is.

Generally speaking, my definition would correspond to some hypothetical statement spoken to me, such as, "This horse is kicking you in the face", if, at the moment, a horse happened to be kicking me in the face.

Likewise, say the same person approached me after the fact, as I lay in the mud, and said: "It is right to place the proposition 'a horse has kicked you in the face' into the category 'true things'."

I would accept this statement as well.

[LDS approach to the problem of contingency]

Hello!

I may be asking this question under the burden of a mistaken notion of LDS doctrines of divinity. If my understanding is correct, the LDS teach that while God the Father is the cause of this particular world, He is not the cause of "ishood", or existence as such. Which is to say, He is Himself in some sense contingent, at least to the degree that he has composition. Since each of the various parts of a composed thing actualize each other, this would seem to move the problem of contingency somewhere beyond this particular world and its God.

Assuming my understanding is right, though, what is the official position of the LDS on why there is something rather than nothing?  

[Outcome Based Religion?]

I think no faith ought to be judged on the basis of the behavior of those who fall short of living up to its principles. The question ought not be, "What are the fruits of those who believe in religion X?", but rather, "If a group flawlessly explicated and lived out the doctrines of religion X, what would the fruits be?"