Adam-God Theory

[UtahDan]

Dan, forgive me if you have already commented on this but I would appreciate your thoughts on the following:

There is certainly no shortage of doctrines believed by members and espoused by current leadership that are not only strange to other christians but sometimes strange to the membership as a whole. That leads me to discount the idea that this doctrine fell from favor, if you will, because it was too far out there (I don't think you suggested this, I am just trying to reason through why it went away).

Our conception of the atonement, and particularly the idea that it happened at least in part in Gethsemane, as well as how we access it (is there a unified doctrine on that point?) is pretty unique and also fairly complex, for example. In other words, while everything you are talking about realtive to AG is counter intuitive and strange to me on my first encounter, I have little doubt that if it had remained a cornerstone of what is taught I would have over the course of my life have a very well developed understanding of it.

So what did cause it to "fade away" I wonder. I just have a hard time swallowing any explanation that includes that some how a bad appearance was created or that the membership was ot ready for it. Maybe I'm wrong but those things ring hollow to me.

Of course this brings about the interesting paradox that I think it the thrust of what a lot of your comments is: that there is no easy way to reconcile this past doctrine with its current abandonment.

This is a long way of getting around to the question of, practically speaking, how did the dissapearance of this come about? It seems to me that it has to be the case the later leaders began more and more to reject it. Many of these people would have to be much more proximate in time to AG teachings and pronouncements than we are, so they must have had some rationale for the rejection. I think that most of the post hoc rationales that you commonly hear are pretty facile and don't hold up to much scrutiny, nevertheless, at some point leaders concluded that they could and should reject AG. Is there any evidence out there of either what prompted this or how any of these past leaders may have justified the departure.

Thanks in advance.

-PL