Quote:
Originally Posted by Mormon Red Death
I'm not Pelagius, Solon or Chapel Hill but let me provide an simple point about your #1.
My son is 8 months old and is male. He doesn't have all the capabilities of a grown man but he is nonetheless male. Couldn't God on a grander scale always have been God but not developed? Maybe we are all Gods right now and haven't developed into our full potential. This would explain some men performing miracles in that they are discovering the true divinity of their nature. Maybe that is why Jesus could do what he could. He understood his divinty like no other human before him. Maybe that was the purpose of the 40 day fast.
"this is life eternal to know the one and eternal god"
Just some rambling thoughts of mine
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Thanks for picking up your machete and trying to cut a path through the guano. By all means, let's work at this if you're game!
Later, I'll try to respond at length, but I find your paraphrasing of John 17:3 to be inaccurate and problematic:
"And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."
So we are all "the only true God" yet Jesus is excluded? Clearly there is a distinction between the Eternal Godhead we worship and a notion of God's nature that we share. That passage could be problematic for trinitarians as well as for what you're saying (one true God AND Jesus Christ?????? I'll have to dig in on the possible hierarchy within the Godhead another time). And Jesus is excluded in that passage despite the fact that Colossians declares:
1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;
16 for in
F8 him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.
and
2:9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,
and
D&C 20:28 Which Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are
one God, infinite and
eternal, without end. Amen.
and
Title page of the BoM: "And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the
Eternal God
I of course believe in the uncreatedness of intelligences, and have indicated my belief in men and women becoming gods and godesses, but the verse that declares the uncreatedness of intelligences makes problems for your position:
D&C 93:29 Man was also in the
beginning with God.
Intelligence, or the
light of
truth, was not
created or made, neither indeed can be.
Man is with God. Not, God is the eternal part of man. Worse, man in this instance obviously does not refer to embodied or mortal man. In this passage man is declared to be intelligence, the light of truth, but to also be distinct from God (you are distinct from something you are with, or from something you accompany). In this passage, man and God are seperate notions.
I think failing to distinguish between god, God, and man is to play semantic games and to fail to account for dozens of scriptures, any coherent notion of "Eternal God," and the distinctiveness of man as a creation of God.