102 Responses to “Are Mormons Christian?”

1. Brian says:

   March 28, 2006 at 11:52 pm

   Max,

   Earlier you stated the following:

   “I do find the argument that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon absurd. Truth be told, the Joseph Smith’s detractors (while he was alive) seemed to know enough to keep trying to find somebody else who could have written it: whether that was Martin Harris, Solomon Spaulding, or others. I haven’t read “A View of the Hebrews,” so that’s now on my to do list. But please remember that writing a 500 page book isn’t very easy, especially when it’s about a culture vastly different from yours”

   As a quick response, I do encourage you to read “A View of the Hebrews”. It is also interesting to read B. H. Roberts outline of parallels between “A View of the Hebrews” and the B of M which is contained in the work “Studies of the Book of Mormon” in which he refers to the parallels between the two books as “striking.”

   Largely, I do not disagree with you that it may not be an easy task to write a 500 page book, but it is a fact that people in fact do write books of that length all the time. “War and Peace”, Dante’s “Inferno” and many other novels come to mind. The mere fact that a book is 531 pages in length (although, probably in reality much shorter given the footnotes at the bottom of each page) is not an argument that it was not written by the man who first presented this book to the public. Nor do I find your argument that it was even more difficult (than normally required to write a novel) for JS to write about a culture “vastly different than his own.” First, novelists frequently engage in such endeavors, especially science fiction writers. Second, I think you can argue that JS actually made up this culture or, alternatively, did a poor job of portraying this culture as illustrated by the fact that the B of M contains the description of many objects which, nearly all archeologists, and probably even most Mormons, will admit did not exist in the New World at the time the alleged B of M people lived in the Americas (unless, of course, as some LDS apologists argue, that the horses described so many times in the B of M were actually deer, or the swords were actually sticks with spikes attached to them, etc.). I can recount many instances of such objects, but I think that you, who I believe from your posts, to be an intelligent person, are already very familiar with these issues. If you desire additional examples, I would again refer you to B. H. Roberts’ “Studies of the Book of Mormon”, where he recounts many instances of these anachronistic objects. Third, Joseph Smith, Jr. most likely learned to read from the KJV Bible, as was probably customary during that time period. The fact that he created a culture of people patterned on that model, is not, to me at least, surprising.

   Lastly, any argument that a simple farm boy, like JS, could never have written the B of M absent divine intervention, appears little different than the alleged revelations provided to us by Muhammad and incorporated into the Koran (If you want a real weird story about an unlearned person being able to write complex works, type in “Patience Worth” into Google).

   In sum, I think it is reasonable to believe that Joseph Smith did write the Book of Mormon. It is certainly, in my mind, not absurd.

   Now, however long this response, what I am particularly curious about is any flaws you perceive in Matt’s argument for the existence of one God.
2. Max Lybbert says:

   March 29, 2006 at 11:57 am

   /* [Matt]: I am intrigued. You state that my argument is now much tighter but that you are not convinced. Where do you locate the defect in the argument that justifies your refusal to assent? Where does the reason of my argument fail? I am rather interested in continuing our discussion, and I will look forward with anticipation to your response.
   */

   I’m having a hard time coming up with a decent response. I get used to hearing the same five things every time I discuss religion with somebody else, and your previous post was not on that list.

   The argument you acvanced was definitely strong. OTOH, it still has the “what Mormons describe is not what I consider God, therefore it can’t be God.” I’m trying to think of a good response that can be boiled down to a comment on a blog that either (1) shows how what Mormons describe can still be considered God, or (2) shows how what Mormons describe isn’t all that different from what you consider God. Either way, I’m enjoying this little conundrum.
3. Max Lybbert says:

   March 29, 2006 at 1:10 pm

   /* [Brian] Largely, I do not disagree with you that it may not be an easy task to write a 500 page book, but it is a fact that people in fact do write books of that length all the time. … The mere fact that a book is 531 pages in length … is not an argument that it was not written by the man who first presented this book to the public.
   */

   My earlier comment was rather short, so please let me try to clear this up some. The talk I linked to is from a professional writer, who often complains that people come up to him and say “I’d love to write a book if only I got the time.” His complaint is that nobody ever goes up to a college professor and says “I’d love to write ground breaking research in your field, if only I had the time” or tells a doctor “I’d love to try my hand at heart surgery, but I simply don’t have enough free time.” For some reason many people think that the difficulty in writing a book is only the part about getting words onto paper.

   Anyhow, Orson Scott Card not only writes science fiction books about alien cultures for a living, he also teaches others how to do the same. He’s familiar with beginning writers. There are certain mistakes that beginning writers make; even those with college degrees; especially when writing stories. There are issues about consistency, exposition, character motivation, dialogue, etc. that nobody gets right by being lucky. Experts in the 1830s hadn’t even identified many of these mistakes. If a farmer/treasure hunter with a fourth grade education wrote a book during the 1830s, you can bet he’d make these mistakes.

   The talk goes over these mistakes, and points out that they don’t exist in the Book of Mormon. From the talk:

   Let’s step outside science fiction for a moment. How many of you have seen old episodes of I Love Lucy? The relationship between a husband and wife in that show, between males and females in general, is deeply offensive, to me at least. Actually, it was deeply offensive to me even in the fifties. … [The show's writers] would never have dreamed that they had better change the way they treat women in their fiction in order to make sure that people from the 70s still could understand their work and its context. It didn’t cross their minds because it didn’t occur to them that the relationship between men and women could possibly be any other way.

   …
   We make other assumptions. For instance, we assume that someone’s job is somehow tied to his identity. Who are you? I’m an engineer. What is he? He’s a doctor. In many other cultures it would be unthinkable to answer these questions in terms of career. The answers would refer to family, tribe, city, or caste. … The Book of Mormon, if it is a science fiction work, if it is an artifact of the 1820s, should be thick with similar cultural clues. 1820s America should leap out of every page, exactly the way 1950s America leaps out of every minute of every episode of I Love Lucy.

   …
   Let’s look at just some of the most obvious things, some of the places where people think Joseph Smith blew it. For example, when Mosiah gives up his throne, the reign of the judges begins, and the judges are chosen “by the voice of the people.” This is automatically taken by the critics of the Book of Mormon as proof that Joseph Smith, living in a democracy, had to show American democracy as the ideal government.

   Think again. The resemblance between the reign of the judges and American democracy are superficial at best. Mormon, living in a time when judges apparently do not rule, explains what his culture would need to have explained — but does not comment at all upon the very significant ways that the judges differ from American democracy. The judges may be in some sense chosen by the will of the people, but look at how it actually works. In Joseph Smith’s time there was much talk about the constitutional division of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers. But in the Book of Mormon, the judge not only judges people, but also enforces the law and directs the gathering of taxes and supplies and sending them in support of the armies. Not your normal, traditional role. He enforces traditional law, but when new laws are needed, the judge makes them! Where in American life of his time would Joseph Smith have seen this?

   The rest of the talk is interesting. Especially the parts about men swooning, or how different authors write about things that interested them, or how crowds seem to appear out of nowhere when somebody needs a group to preach to (hint, when a Mormon missionary went through New England, he had to spend all day visiting the locals to invite them to hear his preaching that night; compare and contrast with Meso-America). And the big issue is that the Book of Mormon doesn’t call attention to this, even though any professional or amature writer in America at the time would have.

   /* Nor do I find your argument that it was even more difficult (than normally required to write a novel) for JS to write about a culture “vastly different than his own.” First, novelists frequently engage in such endeavors, especially science fiction writers.
   */

   Yes, the talk I linked to is from a famous science fiction writer poiting out how difficult it is.

   /* Second, … the B of M contains the description of many objects which, … did not exist in the New World at the time the alleged B of M people lived in the Americas
   */

   This is interesting, because originally the argument was “this book can’t be true, because the Indians clearly don’t have cities.” Then cities were discovered. Then it was “there wasn’t much travel between the North American tribes” but highways in North America were discovered (not made of stone like their South American counterparts, but well-maintained before Columbus arrived) and anthropologists started saying that each tribe probably had a handful of members who had seen both coasts. Now its horses, but there is evidence that horses aren’t an issue ( http://www.1421.tv/pages/evidence/content.asp?EvidenceID=37 text search for “horses”).

   /* Third, Joseph Smith, Jr. most likely learned to read from the KJV Bible, as was probably customary during that time period. The fact that he created a culture of people patterned on that model, is not, to me at least, surprising.
   */

   But the culture in the Book of Mormon is different from what he would have read of in the Bible, because the culture adapted to the lush environment. Besides, I don’t know of any Biblical passage about a man swooning. But, (from the talk):

   So why is it that when Captain Moroni is trying to secure the Nephite borders, he founds cities left and right? Cities that are instantly fortified and populated, seemingly without any kind of migration of settlers from the heartland of the Nephites? Joseph Smith knew the word fort, and new perfectly well that a military commander trying to secure hostile country would not found cities — he would build forts and leave garrisons in them.

   But in Meso-American culture, particularly in the jungles where the Mayans built their cities, there were always small villages and settlements in the wilderness, families on their own, and an ambitious king looking to expand could very easily move into a new territory, gather together a lot of isolated and vulnerable settlers, and unite them into a city. No settlers were needed from outside. The people were already there. They simply gathered together to create public works — temples, in Mayan times, but in Moroni’s case, fortifications for defense.

   Compare and contrast with Biblical cultures.

   /* Lastly, any argument that a simple farm boy, like JS, could never have written the B of M absent divine intervention, appears little different than the alleged revelations provided to us by Muhammad and incorporated into the Koran (If you want a real weird story about an unlearned person being able to write complex works, type in “Patience Worth” into Google).
   */

   But Muhammad (1) did not write anything (the Koran was written down decades later, as a discussion about what Muhammad *did* and *sadi*, not what he wrote) and (2) the Koran is about Muhammad’s own culture, a much easier feat.

   As to Patience Worth, it looks like I’m off on another fact-gathering adventure!
4. Steve says:

   March 29, 2006 at 2:20 pm

   If a farmer/treasure hunter with a fourth grade education wrote a book during the 1830s, you can bet he’d make these mistakes.

   Herman Melville had a 6th grade education, and Samuel Clemens a 5th. They seemed to be decent writers.
5. Max Lybbert says:

   March 29, 2006 at 5:23 pm

   /* Herman Melville had a 6th grade education, and Samuel Clemens a 5th. They seemed to be decent writers.
   */

   Great. Let’s compare. How old were they when they wrote? Melville started writing books at 27. Clemmons started writing books at 30. Smith was 21.

   And how many books did they write? Wikipedia lists 10 books for Melville, and while I didn’t bother counting Clemmons, but they say “more than 60.” Smith did later write a good handful (Lectures on Faith, Church History), but the Book of Mormon would be his very first work.

   Did they have any practice writing before they began publishing books? Melville taught school when he was 28. As far as I can tell, he didn’t do any writing before his first book (a first-person account of his voyage in the Pacific). Clemmons wrote for newspapers for a year before he began writing. Smith had no experience writing books.

   But, to me, the important part is which works are we comparing? Moby Dick was Melville’s sixth book. Clemmons’s well-known books (The Innocents Abroad, his fourth book; Roughing It, his seventh book; Tom Sawyer, his eleventh book, etc.) are products of a lot of practice writing books. Here we’re talking about the first book Smith “wrote,” and comparing it to the writing career of prolific novelists. Additionally, I am not aware of any books by either Melville or Clemmons that seriously try to masquerade as primary documents. They both wrote novels that effectively said upfront “Hello, I am your author, this story did not happen, because I am addressing you personally; even so, thanks for coming and enjoy the ride.” Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Clemmons) does make a show of pretending to be a primary document, but the whole point of the story is to show differences between Medieval British society and Nineteenth Century America.

   So, if I understand your statement, we are comparing a 21 year-old’s “first work” against two prolific writers, and saying “since Clemmons or Melville maybe would have been able to write the Book of Mormon at teh end of their impressive careers, it’s easy to believe an uneducated 21 year-old wrote it himself.”

   I don’t mean to take anything away from Melville or Clemmons, but I’m not conviced that they could have produced the Book of Mormon as their first work. Their first books make the same beginner’s mistakes that Orson Scott Card covers in the talk I linked to all those comments ago. Card made those mistakes. Tolstoy made those same mistakes. Dickens made those mistakes.

   I’m not even convinced they could have written the Book of Mormon at the end of their careers. They weren’t in the practice of writing books like the Book of Mormon. Their books never pretend to be primary documents. The books where they talk about cultures alien to the audience are full of the exposition that you’d expect in the Book of Mormon but that is missing. They liked to write books about what they knew. You won’t find detailed military campaigns in Melville’s writing, nor will you find Clemmons creating a new culture whole cloth (eg., the “instant cities” part of the talk). You definitely won’t find them in the same book.

   So, yes, they were decent writers. No, that doesn’t mean Smith would magically have been able to write the Book of Mormon as his first book. During Smith’s life this was well-understood, and most anti-Mormon groups spent time trying to pin the Book of Mormon on the many people around Smith (Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, etc.).
6. Matt says:

   March 29, 2006 at 5:48 pm

   Max,

   I was pleased with your recent response, and I think it is eminently reasonable of you to take some time to mull over the argument and look at it from different angles. I will of course eagerly await your next post.

   Nevertheless, I must take issue with one point in your last response to my argument, namely your characterization of that argument as a “what Mormons describe is not what I consider God, therefore it can’t be God” type argument. I whole-heartedly disagree. I am pretty sure my argument is not an attempt to describe a personal opinion but an attempt to describe reality as we have access to it through the use of reason. If the argument is right it says something, however provisional or incomplete, about God and not my personal loyalties or opinions.

   With that point of clarification out of the way, I am happy to allow you time to consider the argument, but I must confess that I hope this lull in our discussion is not prolonged since I am very much enjoying our exchange.
7. Max Lybbert says:

   March 29, 2006 at 7:14 pm

   Here’s where I get my previously raised objection:

   /* God must be self-sufficient, i.e. the cause of his own being. If he were not, there would be something outside the scope of his power, and he would not have the unqualified power to save as promised in revelation.
   */

   I know we’re trying to pare this down to a small kernel, and we’re doing it on the Internet. Let me try turning this around, with the help of a very irreverent comic my wife emailed me. The picture itself can be found at http://www.churchofreality.org/images/jesus-cartoon.gif . I don’t agree with the comic, but it turns your premise on its ear.

   For those who won’t visit this link, there is a man ready for Final Judgement, and God is berating him for believing a contradictory set of events. The punchline is “Why would I have to sacrifice Myself to Myself to change a rule I created Myself?!” There is also a caption “if God is all loving, He must not want anyone to be lost. If He is all-powerful, He must get what He wants. Therefore, no one is lost!”

   My point? Let’s play “what if?” What if a constraint were placed on God? That is, if something *can* be done, He can do it, but we’ll assume somethings can’t be done. This constraint “would be something outside the scope of his power.” Our constraint will be that not even God could save all humanity without Christ’s sacrifice. I don’t know who made this requirement. Maybe it’s actually a more complex requirement: not even God can save without either destroying free will or through Christ’s sacrifice, but God refuses to destroy free will.

   We have something that *can* be done, but only through a single pathway. So God does need Christ’s sacrifice, but being all-knowing He knows it will go through, so He can promise it to Adam and Eve and all their descendants. Not only that, but because the sacrifice did go through, God still gets the unqualified power to save that’s referred to in Revelation.

   In this situation we have “something outside the scope of [God's] power,” but it doesn’t destroy his ability to save all humanity. In fact, without this constraint, it becomes very hard to explain why God, being all-powerful, would force himself to go through such contortions to make up for what Adam did.
8. Brian says:

   March 29, 2006 at 9:06 pm

   Max,

   Let me begin by summarizing your argument to bring clarity to our discussion. You argue that it is “absurd” to believe that Joseph Smith compiled the Book of Mormon, that in short, it is completely unreasonable to hold such a belief. In supporting this argument you produce a list of theories and conjecture which is supposed to establish, without an iota of doubt, that JS could not have created this work.

   Orson Scott Card’s theory is very interesting I wonder how he figured all this out. Did someone teach him or did he figure it out on his own, and if taught, how did his teacher learn it. I think its pretty clear that someone figured out the need for consistency in science fiction on their own without the aid of divine revelation. Matter of fact, since science fiction as a genre fits easily within the sort of fiction that has been written for hundreds of years in the West, and that sort of fiction depends on consistency, exposition, and so forth, I would bet that these elements of fiction are a part of our collective cultural ethos, such that many people sense the need for them in successful fiction without the need for elaborate theories. I’ll take it one step further, the art of fiction writing seems to have declined significantly in our time as academic theories pertaining to the craft of fiction have proliferated. Thus, the nominally unlettered Clemmons or Melville created beautiful art where professors of literature write drivel that passes for literary experiment.

   I also found your observation that Samuel Clemmons did not present any of his books as primary, historical documents curious. Actually, Samuel Clemmons wrote a fictional history of Joan of Arc that he passed of as a translation of a primary source work recently rediscovered. I believe that the work was first published without the name of Samuel Clemmons or Mark Twain attached. It is a wholly successful fictionalization of medieval France, and was initially accepted as it was presented. Of further interest are the observations of Clemmons, someone who successfully created a fictionalized account of an historical epoch, on the quality of Joseph Smith’s attempt to do the same:

   “The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James’s translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel-half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern – which was about every sentence or two – he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as ‘exceeding sore,’ ‘and it came to pass,’ etc., and made things satisfactory again. ‘And it came to pass’ was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.”

   In the end, Mr. Card’s is only one theory. Clemmons, another successful author, who succeeded in creating credible historical fiction as well as satire, has another. It is certainly not unreasonable, much less absurd, to opt for Clemmons over Card, either when it comes to fiction or to literary criticism. While I do not rest my own assessment directly on that of Clemmons, I do think his assessment has a little corroborating force.

   As to your argument that the Indians of the Americas had Mongol ponies in 1421 it is not particularly persuasive as to whether horses were actually there in the 5th Century. It is sort of odd that the LDS apologists always see the need to rely upon somewhat tenuous theories advanced by fringe academics in order to establish the plausibility of the B of M culture. If the archeologists begin unearthing chariots, metal armor, or iron swords dating from the 5 th Century and begin to locate battle related artifacts somewhere around the Hill Cumorah, I may reevaluate my position.

   Also, when I talk about Joseph Smith writing the B of M, it does not mean that he could not have drawn material from other sources, be it Rigdon, “A View of the Hebrews”, or what have you. Although you may see things differently, I believe that there is enough evidence for a reasonable person to conclude that Smith concocted the story, whether or not he used such source material. Overall, however, I do not believe that this line of inquiry will be particularly helpful for either of us in discerning whether Mormonism is a true religion and should be considered Christian (we can play point/counterpoint all day I am sure). I believe an inquiry into the characteristics of God, the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, and whether the LDS or traditional Christian understanding best corresponds to reality, to be evidently more fruitful. After all, I think we could all agree that if the B of M does not correspond with reality it cannot be considered a revealed book.
9. Matt says:

   March 29, 2006 at 9:36 pm

   Max,

   I have many objections to the assumptions you make in your lead up to your main argument, but I will leave them unstated so as not to distract from the main thrust of my initial argument and your objection to it.

   I think your objection fails at least as a defense of anything like the Mormon gods. The limitation to which the quoted section of my argument refers when it mentions the “unqualified power to save as promised in revelation” is not the inability to take any particular action but is rather a limitation in the core of the being of the gods described by Mormon doctrine. If these gods are material, or in some cases rarified matter, their existence must be the result of some composition of matter that must be logically prior to them. As such they can have no power to guarantee their continued existence because the principle of their existence rests in this other stuff of which they are composed and not in themselves. To drive at the same point from a slightly different angle, if the gods on which we depend were once non-existent, existence is not part of their definition or essence, but merely an accidental characteristic. Or another angle, if these gods progressed from mortal beings, they are clearly subject to change, and what is subject to change is subject to generation and decay. In all cases mentioned above they are not the eternal “I am” with whom Jesus identifies himself in the New Testament, and they do not have the unqualified power to save because, among other reasons, they cannot guarantee their own existence. Though I am loath to do so, I think it may help to drive home the point of my response if I quote the Book of Mormon: “For do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today and forever, and in him there is no variableness, neither shadow of changing? And now, if ye have imagined up unto yourselves a god who doth vary, and in whom there is shadow of changing, then ye have imagined up unto yourselves a god who is not a God of miracles” (Mormon 9:9-10). Even the proverbial broken clock . . . .

   I think this responds to your objection, but I must confess that I am not sure what you were driving at with the cartoon bit. If I missed something crucial there, please let me know.
10. Tim says:

    March 29, 2006 at 10:39 pm

    Max,

    I read the piece by Orson Card that you linked to. I noted with interest his comments on David Whitmer:

    Those who believe, like David Whitmer, that the translation appeared word for word on the Urim and Thummum, are ripe for disillusionment — or else they are accusing God of some really embarrassing grammatical errors. This is ultimately why David Whitmer ended up outside the Church — he refused to accept the idea that Joseph Smith could edit revelations previously given, precisely because Whitmer believed God gave them to him word for word. But Whitmer’s view of translation was wrong.

    Contrast to this Whitmer’s own statements, taken from “An Address to All Believers in Christ”:

    I testify to the world that I am an eyewitness to the translation of the greater part of the Book of Mormon….

    and later in the same address,

    I will now give you a description of the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man. .

    It seems to me that Card dismisses Whitmer’s eyewitness account with a false dichotomy: discount Whitmer, or accuse God of “really embarrassing” errors. There are, of course, other alternatives, one of which is that Whitmer’s account of the transcription process is accurate but the BoM isn’t of divine origin. After seeing Card’s handling of Whitmer, I have to wonder whether Card’s discussion of the literary aspects of the BoM is rigorous or credible. Is the literary quality of the BoM all Card says it is, or is he seeing only what he wants to, as he seems to do with Whitmer?
11. Max Lybbert says:

    March 30, 2006 at 8:40 am

    Brian:

    /* I think its pretty clear that someone figured out the need for consistency in science fiction on their own without the aid of divine revelation. Matter of fact, since science fiction as a genre fits easily within the sort of fiction that has been written for hundreds of years in the West, and that sort of fiction depends on consistency, exposition, and so forth, I would bet that these elements of fiction are a part of our collective cultural ethos, such that many people sense the need for them in successful fiction without the need for elaborate theories.
    */

    This is easy enough. From the talk:

    When science fiction was just beginning, it was common for writers to stop the action in order to explain the cool new science or technology that they were introducing in the tale. It was not until Robert Heinlein that science fiction writers began to weave their exposition more subtly into the action of the story. The classic example is when, in telling of a character leaving a room, Heinlein wrote, “The door dilated.” No explanation of the nifty technology behind dilating doors — just a simple statement that seems to take the new technology for granted. …

    However, this more subtle kind of exposition is only practiced within the field of science fiction. Whenever mainstream writers who are not familiar with science fiction venture into the field — as with Margaret Atwood or Gore Vidal — they have no clue how to handle exposition. They go right back to stopping the action cold to explain things. And this is exactly what we should have expected the writer of the Book of Mormon to do.

    It’s worth pointing out, however, that handling exposition the way we science fiction writers do it is not correct, either, in documents that actually arise from the alien culture. It’s easier and smoother to read, but it still points up the strangeness. Heinlein wrote “the door dilated” specifically because he knew his readers would not expect it to dilate, and would recognize it as an item of future techology. But someone in that culture, writing about someone leaving a room, would rarely bother to mention the door at all. “He left” would do the job nicely, because there would be nothing unusual about the door to make it worth pointing it out. And if the writer claimed to be writing a shortened or abridged story, he would hardly waste his time on unnecessary explanations of things that didn’t seem unusual in any way. So even the sophisticated method of science fiction exposition is not appropriate in the Book of Mormon, and in fact is not used.
    */

    Heinlein was born in 1907. The Book of Mormon was published in 1830. My wife bought me a collection of the best science fiction and fantasy from before Tolkein, and it’s very clear that “the door dilated” wasn’t understood in the late 1800s, let alone the early 1800s.

    Another science fiction afficcionade (Eric Raymond) puts this technique back on Rudyard Kipling ( http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=234 ), but even then we’re talking about a work published in 1901. Sorry, but your hand waving about “science fiction has been doing this for centuries” doesn’t hold up when compared to the actual science fiction.

    /* Actually, Samuel Clemmons wrote a fictional history of Joan of Arc that he passed of as a translation of a primary source work recently rediscovered. I believe that the work was first published without the name of Samuel Clemmons or Mark Twain attached.
    */

    I was not aware of this. Was it his very first published story? Was it 500 pages long? Some of the “mistakes” referred to were an unconcious attempt to write for a modern audience to answer questions that the audience was speculating on, or adding (say) romance because the audience liked romance. A quick Goolge search turned up the text (at http://www.litrix.com/joan/joan001.htm ). It includes a note about why it’s such a monumental book:

    THE DETAILS of the life of Joan of Arc form a biography which is unique among the world’s biographies in one respect: It is the only story of a human life which comes to us under oath, the only one which comes to us from the witness-stand.

    Something tells me there was a lot of speculation about what was said during her trial. But, I’m off to reading.
12. Max Lybbert says:

    March 30, 2006 at 9:07 am

    Matt, lemme try again.

    When I first read your “God must have been His own Creator, otherwise things lie outside his power; if things lie outside his power, then he doesn’t have the unqualified ability to save that we rely on” argument, I neatly packaged it up like this:

    1. God is His own Creator. A person able to create Himself can surely save all humanity.

    2. God is not His own Creator. He is therefore bound to some limitations. He may tell us what we need to do to be saved, but apparently He’s not doing the saving. Instead He’s relying on somebody above Him, or on natural laws He has no control over (much like I have no control over chemistry, so I can’t say that I “caused” a reaction when I combine vineagar and baking soda). Therefore He doesn’t have the ability to save — either somebody else does, or He’s telling us how to start a natural reaction that would occur even without His power.

    I didn’t think of the third possibility right away:

    3. Perhaps God has limitations on His power; but they don’t prevent Him from saving humanity, although they may influence how He does it.

    Clearly I’m arguing for (3), but I have to acknowledge that (1) is a possibility. My argument isn’t so much that (1) is wrong (I can’t prove or disprove it), but that (1) is not the only possibility, and that the converse of (1) is not necessarily true.

    Your most recent comment includes the statement:

    /* If these gods are material … their existence must be the result of some composition of matter that must be logically prior to them. As such they can have no power to guarantee their continued existence because the principle of their existence rests in this other stuff of which they are composed and not in themselves.
    */

    This seems to fall under the parameters I’ve laid out on the question. Specifically, their continued existence would have to rely on a natural law that guarantees it. But even if their existence doesn’t come through themselves, if they can prove the natural law then they can prove their continued existence. I can’t make vineagar and baking soda react, but I can prove they always will.

    I’ll concede that (1) makes logical sense. I can’t disprove (1). But I’m not trying to disprove (1) so much as I’m saying that the converse (In order to save all humanity, God must be His own Creator) isn’t true. To do that, I only need to show that it’s possible for God to save all humanity without being His own Creator, or more generally, with limitations on His power.

    One of the recent arguments I’ve run into is that God can’t be both all-powerful and all-loving if it’s possible for people to go to hell. That’s where the cartoon’s caption comes in. If God set a plan in motion knowing that some people will go to hell then (a) He doesn’t love the people going to hell (in which case He’s not all loving), (b) He loves the people going to hell, but out of His options, this plan sends the smallest number there (in which case He has limits on His power, because He had to choose from a list of options), or (c) God does love the people going to hell, He could have sent fewer people to hell, but He chose this plan instead. (c) just doesn’t make logical sense. I could rewrite (c) to say perhaps this plan is easier for God, but then if He has absolutely no limits on His power, then He has the ability to make a harder-to-implement-plan easier-to-implement. That is, if it takes X heavenly units of power to save us through the current system, but would take 2X units to save us without Christ’s sacrifice, couldn’t God’s unlimited power change those values so that saving us without Christ’s sacrifice would take less power than with the sacrifice. Then He could choose to not “sacrifice Himself to Himself” to change His own rule (the other part of the cartoon).

    But Christ was sacrificed. So we have to assume that God wanted that. Why? I don’t know the mind of God. I’m only advancing the position that a limit on God’s power could explain the need for Christ’s sacrifice. Perhaps, out of His options, God could destroy free will, or He could rely on Christ’s sacrifice, and He decided to rely on Christ’s sacrifice.
13. Max Lybbert says:

    March 30, 2006 at 9:31 am

    Tim, I had heard of the hat story. I didn’t know where it was published, so I appreciate the pointer. I did know that a modern-day General Authority used it in a talk a few years ago, so I can’t say “that’s utterly ridiculous and false!” The interesting aspect of “An Address to All Believers in Christ” is that Whitmer wrote it to (a) say the Book of Mormon was true, but that (b) Joseph Smith was a false, or at least fallen, prophet. The interesting aspect of Smith spelling out each word of the Book of Mormon is that English did not have standardized spellings at the time, so even a “God-sanctioned” spelling may have needed correction when standardization came along. Also, the printer said that the pages he got did not have a single punctuation mark on them.

    On top of these two points, I have personally done translation work and I know how it’s not a true science. There was a time that people hoped to create a universal language that they could translate any other language to and from. For instance, my copy of the Catholic Cathechism is in Portuguese. It was translated from French (according to its title page). The French, I believe, is a translation from an official Latin document. However, I have a hunch that the Japanese translation of the Cathechism isn’t translated from the French. The plan with this universal language was to make it easier to handle works that had to be translated into several languages. In this case, the official Latin could be translated into Universal, which could then be translated into every other language.

    That hit a brick wall. People who only speak a single language somehow get the impression that word-for-word translations are possible. Sorry, but it ain’t so. Of course, we all know this, because we’ve seen translation like http://www.billxu.com/friend/rms/rms.billxu.steamed.bread.html . We know the reason this doesn’t flow properly is that the grammar structures of the two languages (in this case English and Chinese) are different. We know that a good translator has to finesse things some (for instance http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/translation.html ). Of course, this is the reason Muslims only read the Quran in Arabic. It’s also why I won’t make a big point about the wording of a particular Biblical passage without first comparing it to my Portuguese or Spanish editions.

    So I simply don’t have an issue with Smith’s editing of the Book of Mormon. In fact, the most recent reprinting of the Book of Mormon corrected printing mistakes made the first time ’round. “I will gather in my flock from whether I scattered them” (whether means “if”) and “from whither I scattered them” (whither means “where”). Embarassing mistake? Understandable given that it was published before standardized spelling? Printer’s error? You decide.
14. Max Lybbert says:

    March 30, 2006 at 11:32 am

    I should also point out that Joseph Smith’s original announcements of the publishing of the Book of Mormon included language like “I have endeavored to translate this work into language similar to the KJV of the Bible” — implying that he had some leeway in word choice.
15. Max Lybbert says:

    March 30, 2006 at 12:07 pm

    First book, first chapter of Joan of Arc’s history from Mark Twain:

    Ah, France had fallen low–so low! For more than three quarters of a century the English fangs had been bedded in her flesh, and so cowed had her armies become by ceaseless rout and defeat that it was said and accepted that the mere sight of an English army was sufficient to put a French one to flight.

    First, let me explain the difficulty of pulling off a hoax like what Twain’s work tried to do. Here we have a document that claims to be the history written by Joan of Arc’s personal servant for his own French decendants. A work like this will often stop the story in order to explain an important cultural detail, like the above passage does. This is especially true of beginning writers, who de Conte was supposed to be. So, for Twain to pull this off, he must resist the temptation to explain things that Americans needed explained, but he also needed to put in explanations that French readers in 1492 *would* need. My argument is that the Book of Mormon is able to resist the temptation of explaining cultural details to an Nineteenth Century audience, but does have some explanations for a AD 400 Meso American audience, but we’ll get to that.

    According to the preface of this hoax, French readers in 1492 (and not many French could read in 1492, so perhaps that should be “French nobles” but then nobles weren’t likely to want to read about Joan of Arc, and now we’re wondering if even historically it makes sense for this work to exist — more on that later) had access to “all the tales and songs and histories of Joan of Arc, which you and the rest of the world read and sing and study in the books wrought in the late invented art of printing.” But this passage implies that these well-studied, rich, French readers of 1492 would need an explanation about how bad France’s military was in 1410. Sorry, but I think this is the kind of mistake that is notably absent from the Book of Mormon. It looks like Sam Clemmons was subject to this same kind of mistake.

    Now, on to the Book of Mormon. Are you arguing that a farmer/treasure hunter with a fourth grade education was able to (in his very first published work) write a 500 page book (at 21 years of age) without making the kind of mistake Mark Twain made in his fake history of Joan of Arc? If not, could you please direct me to a similar expository section of the Book of Mormon clearly written by an 1830s writer for an 1830s audience? There are 500 pages, so this kind of mistake should be easier to catch.

    The remarkable thing in the Book of Mormon is that only once in the whole book does the author stops cold to explain something. Do you remember where that is? It has to do with the monetary system. In the middle of the account of Zeezrom, the lawyer, the action suddenly stops cold. Why? Because the value of money is surely something that would have changed across the 300 or 400 years between Zeezrom and Mormon. That’s a cultural difference Mormon would recognize. And, predictably, like any naive writer, he stops the action in order to explain the unfamiliar facts. But notice how he does it. There is no absolute reference. Apparently one of those words or values in his list still meant something in the fourth century A.D. He didn’t think to tell us exactly what you could buy with a senon, and certainly not in any terms that would mean anything to an 1820s reader, because Mormon must have considered the value of some element in the monetary system to be obvious. So even in the one place where we do get an “expository lump,” it’s handled exactly as a writer from the alien culture would have handled it, and utterly without reference to the 1820s.

    And, on the other hand, this farmer was able to avoid explanations of why Nephi’s first reaction to Zoram running off is to swear an oath “as I live, and as the Lord God lives,” or an explanation of why nobody needs to round up an audience to preach to, or an explanation of why the great military leaders don’t build forts but entire cities in short periods of time? So well, in fact, that it took over a hundred years for people to recognize the importance of those actions, and another sixty years before people recognized the importance of not explaining the importance of those actions in the first place? Wow, that’s a clever farmer. And with a fourth grade education? They don’t make fourth grade educations like they used to.

    Oh, and if your sure somebody knew this before Rudyard Kipling, please let me know who.
16. Brian says:

    March 30, 2006 at 9:57 pm

    Max,

    Although I have tried to point out to you that I do not find this inquiry particularly interesting or persuasive, you insist upon relying exclusively on Orson Card’s tenuous theory on science fiction to somehow establish that Joseph Smith could not have created the B of M. Your response to my last comment shows that you fail to see the forest from the trees and completely miss my greater point.

    Since you insist upon my response, I will make my position very clear. Who really cares what Orson Scott Card thinks about science fiction? I am not about to consult him, or the writers Battlestar Galactica, about philological questions as to the date of composition of a particular document. Oh yeah, and what is this fascination with science fiction anyway. I guess your argument must be that Joseph Smith was writing divinely inspired science fiction. Science fiction is still fiction!

    If you took a look at Joan of Arc with anything approaching an open mind, you would have noticed several things. First, it is not science fiction. Second, the document supposedly written by de Conte was addressed to his great great nephews and nieces and not University of Paris scholars. Third it takes the form of a memoir. All this suggests to me that someone in de Conte’s position for real would probably include something like the passage to which you object in his memoirs to another generation living in different circumstances, especially since these memoirs are not intended as science fiction. Perhaps if you were less wedded to Mr. Card’s rules on what makes good and bad fiction, you might have picked up on that.

    On a more serious level, if someone were interested in generating counterfeit scripture, my guess is that he would probably not try to imitate memoirs or science fiction but true scripture. I have not seen anyplace in scripture where they stop to explain something to modern readers. I would suggest, however, if Smith were a little more sophisticated, he would have recognized that he lacked perfect fluency in the idiom of King James’ English and opted to imitate only the general tone and structure (and his inclusion of errors from the KJV into the B of M certainly suggests something less than divine origin as well). If you doubt the ability of unlettered people to compose religious texts regarding foreign environments without elaborate explanations several come to mind. Try the Iliad, try Gilgamesh, try the Gnostic gospels (some of which were composed hundreds of years after they were supposedly written and seem to have fooled plenty of people, regardless of what Mr. Card thinks), try the Islamist gospel of Barnabas. Are these old enough for you?

    The point you raise about translation of various modern languages is of no avail. In layman’s term- you are comparing apples to oranges. Unlike all other translators, JS claims to have had access to magical seer stones. As a result, his “translation” of the B of M should have been more like an exercise akin to transcription , at least if JS’ story is to be believed. Whitmer’s account directly evidences this method of transcribing.

    In short, your last response continued your pattern of relying upon tenuous theories to attack the most trivial points in my comment and than passing off your response as refuting the main point of my argument- that it is not absurd to believe that the B of M was created by Joseph Smith.

    If you are interested in talking about Christ, the Holy Trinity, the characteristics of God and why Mormons are or are not Christian, I would be happy to continue this discourse. But I believe it is pointless to continue to talk about Mr. Card’s theory as a test for divine authorship.
17. Max Lybbert says:

    March 31, 2006 at 6:04 pm

    Well, if we aren’t getting anywhere, it does make sense to move on.
18. Matt says:

    April 1, 2006 at 9:36 am

    Max,

    Thank you for your last response. I think it helped clarify your previous post, but you still seem to misunderstand my argument. In addition, on reviewing your restated argument, I am convinced that it does not accomplished what you think it does.

    As a preliminary matter, a refutation of my argument requires a little more than you think. My argument is not hypothetical, it is an argument about reality, based on reality they way it is, observable to the human senses and able to be reasoned about by the human intellect. As such, you cannot disprove it by merely showing that another reality is possible. If your argument proved that, which it does not, I would simple respond by pointing out that the reality we live in, the created universe, or what ever you want to call it, demands an account of God like the one I provided. Your possibility would remain hypothetical, a phantasm of the imagination, a mythical beast.

    My argument is not hypothetical in the sense that it does not assume some characteristic of God based on a disputed revelation. Rather, it reasons from the created world, asking what limitations must be excluded from God in order that we might witness the created effects we actually witness. As such, it is not even an argument about the inner workings of God, but is instead an argument about the nature of created reality and God’s relationship to it.

    My third preliminary observation, I am pretty sure I did not say, or at least intend to say, that “God must have been His own Creator” My whole point, or a large part of it, is that God must be uncreated if he is not to be subject to change, generation, and decay. Try to think of it this way, a creature who relies on a creator, or series of creators for that matter, for every element of his existence is necessarily dependent on that creator and cannot keep any promises the that the creator does not allow to be kept. (I hasten to add that I am not saying that matter is bad or evil. It was after all created by the uncreated eternal God who is unqualifiedly good. I merely maintain that it has certain characteristics and one of them is susceptibility to change).

    A final preliminary, I am curious that you chose to ignore the Book of Mormon’s insistence that “if ye have imagined up unto yourselves a god who doth vary, and in whom there is shadow of changing, then ye have imagined up unto yourselves a god who is not a God of miracles” (Mormon 9:9-10). No material being can be described as unchanging. I don’t think I need to provide an argument here because the proposition is self-evident, i.e., the concepts of matter and material beings properly understood necessarily entail the conclusion that material beings change. In fact, it might not be that much of a stretch to describe matter as “the shadow of changing.”

    Now, turning to your argument about natural law, I am inclined not to formulate a lengthy argument but rather make a series of observations in the spirit of friendly discourse:

    First, I would observe that as contingent beings, the gods of Mormonism could not have called themselves out of nothingness, since they did not exist to do the calling. They must have a creator. But if we go back far enough in the chain of contingent beings, we must reach the conclusion that there has to be a non-contingent being, i.e. a being that exists because its existence is necessary, a being without beginning or end, a being on which all contingent beings depend for their existence. As a matter of logic there cannot be an infinite chain of contingent beings each depending on the other as an effect on a cause because there would be no being to start the chain. In other words, it can’t be turtles all the way down! The non-contingent being in this chain is the only one in the position to be making any non-qualified promises, because everything is subject to him, dependent on him for its very existence. To sum up, a created universe consisting of contingent beings necessarily entails the existence of a non-contingent being that exists above and outside the order of creation.

    Second, what would it mean for the Mormon gods to prove through the natural laws that they will have continued existence for ever? Among other things, I think it would mean that they can foresee an infinite chain of events beginning from the present deducing from cause to effect and so forth. The problem with this as hinted at in a subsequent post by Brad is that it would require an entirely deterministic universe in which there is no room for free will just predictable effect after predictable cause. This would not only contradict our experience but it would eliminate the possibility of a personal savior because properly speaking there would be no such thing as personal actions. All such concepts would be shown to be merely illusion. (This is not a problem for a God existing above time who could know everything not by deduction but by a mere glance of the intellect.) I think there is another problem as well, your hypothetical would require that the gods in question can prove the permanence of these natural laws, but since this permanence could not exist in an infinite chain of contingent beings, the gods you describe would have had to have learned of the existence of a non-contingent being upon which all creation, including themselves rests. Why are the Mormon gods trying to conceal the existence of this superior, eternal being without beginning or end who created all things and upon which all things depend for existence?

    Finally, with respect to your “what if” arguments, I see no need to speculate about the inner workings of God. My argument is that in order to have the created universe we have, God must be free of certain limitations. With respect to the inner life of God, I will follow Isaiah: “For [God’s] thoughts are not [our] thoughts, neither are [our] ways [God’s] ways . . . . For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are [God’s] ways higher than [our] ways and [God’s] thoughts higher than [our] thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9. I will only say, because we have been told so by the eternal everlasting God who is without beginning or end that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was incarnated, suffered, died, and rose from the dead out of love God’s love for us, a love which far surpasses our own love for ourselves. I would only add that your supposed logical conundrums seem to rest on a failure to take God as the measure of all things. In short they appear to be mere exercises in presumption.

    Anyway, Max, I have enjoyed are exchange and I hope you found it useful. I would encourage you to continue thinking about these issues. There are hundreds of good books on the subject that you might look at to get some more ideas. In fact, you have inspired me to give Saint Thomas’s Summa Contra Gentiles another go. Given your active mind, I think you would enjoy it, but there are shorter books out there too. I think Brian has suggested some of them earlier in this thread. I would only add my personal plug for the work of G.K. Chesterton. It is thoroughly enjoyable. Many people like to start with Orthodoxy but given your acute mind, you might also enjoy his work on St. Thomas. I think it is called Saint Thomas, The Dumb Ox, or something like that. For the reasons discussed in my immediately following post, I will be unable to continue this exchange. Best wishes.
19. Anonymous says:

    April 1, 2006 at 9:40 am

    Just trying to fix the block quote issue.
20. Matt says:

    April 1, 2006 at 9:43 am

    Hello all,

    “He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” Luke 1:51.

    I am writing to inform you all that I will not be positing any further comments on this thread, and I will be taking a rather prolonged break from commenting generally. It is not that I haven’t enjoyed our little exchange. It is rather that I am finding my involvement here is becoming, for me, an occasion of sin and is interfering with my prayer life. Unfortunately, I find it rather hard not to be prideful when I consider my arguments in defense of the eternal, everlasting God, who is without beginning or end, but by this secret pride I fear that I am stealing something from God, appropriating to myself the praise that belongs only to him, my Lord and my All. Because I do not foresee my ability to overcome this defect in the near-term, I can only flee from the temptation. For me, the temptation rests in the facility with which these arguments dispense with the Mormon gods.

    By my withdrawal, I do not intend in anyway to repudiate my arguments, which properly speaking are not my arguments but arguments which have been known for centuries, arguments which for centuries have gone un-refuted. In fact, rather than trying to refute these arguments, I would suggest my interlocutors could benefit greatly by studying them as presented by true masters and trying to understand them as they are intended.

    To Max, Rob, and Carl, I would say that if you keep yourselves open to the graces that Jesus Christ pours forth from the Cross, I have little doubt you will come to a greater love for Him, which is after all what he asks in return for the suffering and humiliation that He freely underwent in the Crucifixion. Be assured of my continued prayers.

    “He has filled the hungry with good things.” Luke 1:53.

    To Jesus through Mary,
    Matt
21. Seth R. says:

    May 12, 2006 at 10:19 pm

    I’m afraid I only had a chance to read halfway through the comments. Apologies.

    Mormons often make the claim that the Nicene Creed was purely the result of Hellenistic philosophy. That’s obviously a gross simplification and Catholics are right to poke it full of holes.

    But whatever the philosophical source of the Nicene Creed, its result is very much reliant on human philosophical concepts. Don’t get me wrong, the philosophy behind Catholic belief is powerful and compelling and intensly interwoven with Biblical passage. However, it is still, in the end, a human philosophy.

    God can only be one, because He is perfect. Perfection requires that there be only one, since any separation from the perfect whole would be to diminish that perfect whole.

    God must not have a body. If He did, He would be physically in one place, and unable to be everywhere at once. This limits Him. That which is perfect may not be limited. Therefore God has no tangible body.

    These arguments are solely an appeal to human logic. Sure they draw on the Bible for some ammo, but the Bible can be read either way on this subject. Really, the only thing backing up the Catholic position on the nature of God is a couple thousand years of human logical endeavor. And God has told us in the Bible how to regard that which relies on the arm of the flesh.

    I freely admit that Mormons shouldn’t be too cavalier about dismissing a couple thousand years of logical and theological endeavor as mere “twaddle.” But neither should the Catholics be so cocksure that God is willing to be bound by their limited human logical endeavors.

    I made this comment in a religious discussion earlier and one of the participants pointed out that if I dismiss logic as a valid basis for understanding God, I dismiss the very light by which we understand our world, and therefore dismiss any basis for understanding anything.

    A very revealing statement!

    Logic is not the light by which we understand the world. We understand the world first by Revelation, and by the Light of Christ. Logic is just a bonus door-prize.

    The LDS faith has never considered itself bound by the acheivements of human philosophy, although its followers may, at times, seem enamored with it. God is to be understood by Revelation, not by logic.

    Hellenistic? Plato? Gnostic? Ultimately I don’t care which tradition of human thought the Nicene Creed came from. I still maintain that it was primarily a product of human thought combined with Biblical passages. Catholic thinkers should not be too quick to think that debunking the claim that the Nicene creed was Hellenistic automatically places the Creed squarely within the bounds set by divine decree. That is far from proven.
22. Mormons and Catholics » Blog Archive » Where’s the Catholics? says:

    May 12, 2006 at 11:31 pm

    [...] Clearing up Confusion on Deification by Clark Gobble Those who have been following Brad’s blog for awhile will already be familiar with these posts. So this is primarily the benefit of LDS newcomers. Another recent post worth consideration is Brad’s consideration of whether Mormons are Christians. Catholics have a lot of theology riding on defining a proper Christian. So they have an in house definition that has to exclude those considered invalidly baptized. Mormons, on the other hand, appeal to the way we –through sacred convenants– self-identify as Christians and to rather full proof arguments that excluding Mormons for belief X also excludes consensus Christian group Y that also held belief X. I think Brad breaks new ground in his conclusion: [...]
23. Brad says:

    May 13, 2006 at 8:34 pm

    Seth,

    What should be foremost in a good theologian’s heart is humility, and what should be foremost in his mind are his limits. Catholic theologians don’t claim that God fits into some philosophical container. We don’t believe things based on logic. As you say, God is to be understood by revelation.

    I disagree with you where the two are mutually exclusive. To your “God is to be understood by Revelation, not by logic,” I answer that God is always to be understood through revelation, which can come through logic. I think logic is one of the conduits through which revelation flows. In fact, I believe that all created things are. Some people see God more clearly using logic or philosophy. Some see Him more clearly in the beauty of human art. Some see Him best in the good works of His children. Some receive private revelation. None of these is to be exalted above all the others; it’s a personal matter for each individual how God’s revelation is most clearly communicated. He made our senses (not just our five physical senses, but I mean any of the ways that we take in data from the universe) for a reason, and that reason is to perceive Him in some way.

    God warned against the arm of the flesh, but also against deceiving spirits and false private revelation.

    As for Nicea, the revelation was already there – the life of Christ. Heresies twisted that revelation. The Church answered heresy by exploring and recalling the teaching of the Apostles. The overwhelming majority of the bishops still held the same faith, that the Son is one in being with the Father; the Church wasn’t in some kind of crisis over this. The arguments of the heretics can never overpower the truth, which is why the Church always answers them. If elements of philosophy are the tools God gives us to do it, then we do well to use them.
24. Seth R. says:

    May 13, 2006 at 11:23 pm

    Fair enough.

    My main point was to show that creating logical proofs about the nature of God is hardly the slam dunk against Mormon theology that many people claim it is.

    As for appeal to historical narrative … we don’t even have a completely clear idea of what happened historically 40 years ago. I would be skeptical of any attempt to define, with absolute certainty, who the “good guys” and the “bad guys” were as far back as Constantine’s time.

    However, I like where you place logic within the full spectrum of religious experience. That will be a take-home message for tonight.

    Oh, and sorry about the thread-necromancy. I didn’t stop to look at the dates on the conversation before adding my own two cents.
25. Brad says:

    May 13, 2006 at 11:59 pm

    Seth,

    My main point was to show that creating logical proofs about the nature of God is hardly the slam dunk against Mormon theology that many people claim it is.

    I think some arguments are over-hyped, some don’t work with LDS because they’re built on definitions and assumptions that we don’t share, but some really are valid and unanswered. I’m sure we’ll discuss them as time passes.

    … we don’t even have a completely clear idea of what happened historically 40 years ago.

    If that’s the case, we can’t be sure that Joseph Smith or the LDS church of the past really were what the current LDS church claims they were. There’s a baby/bathwater line with history. I do realize that the Catholic faith puts much more stock in people handing things on to people (like in Rom. 10:17), but of course that and ecclesial indefectibility go together.

    However, I like where you place logic within the full spectrum of religious experience. That will be a take-home message for tonight.

    I hope it is. It’s easy for Catholics to put down spiritual experience as emotional desire or evil spirit and for LDS to put down logic as the arm of flesh, but in truth, both of them can do very important work in someone’s life, for good or for evil. I used to think logic made things open-and-shut, but real-life experience has taught me otherwise.

    And don’t worry about “rezzing.” I use the RSS Comments Feed, which alerts me of any comments whatsoever. So I’ll always see them, at least.
26. Brian says:

    May 14, 2006 at 6:53 pm

    Seth,

    I find it very odd that you are attempting to argue against the use of logic and reason since the very act of arguing presupposes the use of logic and reason. If you do not believe in the validity of logic and reason, you really cannot argue- instead you merely assert conclusions.

    Secondly, you really should really read ALL of Matt’s posts in this thread. I think he does a good job of backing up his position. I disagree with your statements that logic and reason are not of great important. God is inherently reasonable. It is in His nature. As such, God will not contain contradictions within himself. It is not in God’s nature to be illogical. There are certain attributes of God we are capable of knowing through the natural use of reason (see Matt’s posts above). Certain attributes of God, however, must be revealed to us because we cannot obtain these Truths merely through the use of reason. Even these revealed truths, however, are not illogical, again, because God is inherently logical.
27. Carl Loeber says:

    May 15, 2006 at 10:31 pm

    I have another note from NT account of Christ being the Son of
    God rather than God Himself ala the Trinity.

    Christ in the Garden praying to His Father. Paraphrased: “Let this cup pass from me, but Thy Will, not Mine be done.”
28. Carl Loeber says:

    May 15, 2006 at 10:34 pm

    He is here clearly stating that His Will and His Father’s Will are not identical.
29. Brad says:

    May 15, 2006 at 11:42 pm

    Yes, Carl, we believe that the Son had both the divine nature (He is God) and a human nature (He is a man). It’s in a human’s nature to have a will, and so He had a human will in addition to His divine will. If you’re ready to actually study Catholic beliefs about this, see this article in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here is an excerpt:

    Christ, being true God and true man, has a human intellect and will, perfectly attuned and subject to his divine intellect and divine will, which he has in common with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
30. Brian says:

    May 16, 2006 at 9:01 am

    Carl,

    You have still not addressed my question posed to you. Until you provide an adequate answer, you have not established why, as an adherent to a great apostasy theory, you should trust the Catholic Bible. After all, if there was a great apostasy, why would my apostate Church have preserved the Bible. For your convenience, I have copied my last inquiry to you below:

    I think that you fail to understand my argument, You have not answered why you “have no problem relying on the Gospels and New Testament.” Citing a bunch of quotations from the Scripture will not cut it. One of the founding principles of the LDS church is that Christendom distorted the gospels. The following quotes from some of the early LDS leaders certainly suggest this idea:

    Orson Pratt: “…and who, in his right mind, could for one moment, suppose the Bible in its present form to be a perfect guide? No one can tell whether even one verse of either the Old or New Testament conveys the ideas of the original author” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 7, p. 28).

    Brigham Young: “You believe Adam was made of the dust of this earth. This I do not believe…I have publicly declared that I do not believe that portion of the Bible as the Christian world do. I never did, and I never want to. What is the reason I do not? Because I have come to understanding, and banished from my mind all the baby stories my mother taught me when I was a child” (Journal of Discourses, vol.2, p.6).

    These leaders certainly do not indicate that you should be comfortable relying upon the Christian Bible.

    You still have not addressed why the LDS rely upon the Catholic canon as the Gospels, which, in fact, was set years after the Council of Nicea. You also have not addressed why many of the spurious and extracanonical gospels circulating during the Fourth Century (and there were an awful lot of them) should not be included in the canon. How could such an uninspired church, not capable of interpreting scripture, somehow have the wherewithal and authority to set the true canon?
31. Carl Loeber says:

    May 16, 2006 at 9:20 am

    Brad, OK so Christ is talking to Himself. That is quite a stretch to come to just to keep to your own philosophical dictates as to what you think God should be, especially considering there is no evidence that He ever stated such an idea, that when He prays and addresses the His Father He is really talking to Himself, or His “other Nature.”

    Brian, just accept that I believe the Bible as the best that there is available. That is just common sense unless you think it is somehow magic that each word is an absolute description of truth after years of transmission, and that each writer knew the exact facts. Is it as good as a court transcript would be today? I don’t know but I love the Bible. And thank you for the Catholic Church for it did to bring it to us.
32. Brian says:

    May 16, 2006 at 2:03 pm

    Carl,

    I appreciate your recognition of the Bible as containing Truth. However, I am having trouble understanding why you would think that an apostate Church would compile a true record of events that you claim it rejected more than 300 years after those events occurred. Why do you believe the Church faithfully recorded True events? Why would the Church even deal with True events if the apostates overcame the Church?
33. Brad says:

    May 16, 2006 at 4:19 pm

    Carl,

    I won’t allow misrepresentation of religious beliefs, be they Catholic, Mormon, or anything else. If I or a commentator make an error and someone points it out, it will be corrected. If a commentator continues to insist on the false representation of a religion, his welcome will wear out. Yours is wearing out. Feel free to continue the discussion as soon as you understand, or at least appear to have attempted to understand, Catholic Christology. Until then, if you keep using strawmen, then your comments or the appropriate parts of them will be deleted.
34. rhonda says:

    May 23, 2006 at 5:48 pm

    Wow what a site……my question my be a stupid one…but what exactly do you think they were talking about per your length discussions above as “matter”.
35. Brad says:

    May 23, 2006 at 7:53 pm

    I’m sure my definition isn’t the most precise, but basically matter means anything physical, what can be seen, touched, etc.
36. Seth R. says:

    May 29, 2006 at 2:29 pm

    I have never regarded the “Great Apostasy” spoken of in Mormon Doctrine as absolute. Neither do I believe it was all motivated by “evil” intentions (though some of it probably was). I realize that I differ from many Mormons in this respect (Mormon Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, for example was pretty convinced that the Catholic Church was utterly corrupt and always had been).

    I think there are degrees of losing one’s way once the prophetic lifeline with God is cut.

    So I have never felt that the whole idea of a Great Apostasy required that the Catholic founders completely turn away from and reject the truth. I simply hold that, human nature being what it is, errors and misinterpretations were bound to creep into things. It is even possible that the Church as organized by Saint Peter, would be apostate without the continual guidance, adaptation and interpretation of a true prophet. A prophet adapts the Lord’s cannon to apply correctly to new situations. Without the prophet, the Word can become misapplied and taken out of context.

    And of course, any changes that God may wish to make in the written Word are preempted when His representatives aren’t there to administer it.
37. Carl Loeber says:

    August 5, 2007 at 2:56 pm

    Yes there is one God the Father. And Jesus explained what He means when He says that “God and I are One” … when He told the apostles that he wanted them to be “One” even as “I and my Father are One”.
38. carlloeber says:

    November 18, 2007 at 10:39 pm

    Four ideas to share ..

    1. why is it so offensive to have a diversity of understanding and belief on the concept of the nature of the Father and Son ..? especially given the fact that …

    2. There are about a dozen references in the text of the scriptures that God and Christ are the same entity .. and there are about a hundred or more references to Christ being the Son of God the Father .. there are also parts of the text that specifically deal with question we are treating .. of the meaning of the text that says that God and Christ are One . .. such as that of the previous post .. also see 3. below ..

    3. 1 Timothy 2:5 .. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus

    Now the Orthodox could state that this verse clearly states the this one God and Mediator are the same Person perhaps .. but the LDS can say the it is two separate entities that is meant .. 1) God the Father and 2) the Mediator, the man Jesus Christ

    4. I think really that LDS and orthodox doctrines are really talking about two different Gods when they talk about the God Elohim .. the Orthodox are talking about the first God .. and the LDS are talking about OUR God the Father ..

    5. really what it comes down to as far as the orthodox are concerned .. it that they believe the Trinity concept for one reason .. because the Church Fathers agreed and agree that this is what they should believe ..
39. Carl Loeber says:

    December 8, 2007 at 9:49 am

    You can simply look at it this way …

    Jews believe that God the Father is God, Christians believe that Jesus is God, LDS believe that both are God ..
40. Sage Boman says:

    December 16, 2007 at 9:38 pm

    PLEASE READ THIS, HERE IS THE TRUTH FROM A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS -

    I have been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints all my life. I view all people everywhere as my brothers and sisters, reguardless of thier beliefs. That is what we teach as a Church, for that is what the Lord has declared. We as members of the Church just want people to know, that we are Christians. We teach of Christ, we rejoice in Christ. We believe that he is the son of God. We do not appoligize for declaring the good news, that we can become even as our Father in Heavenly and live as ETERNAL FAMILIES. We can see our loved ones who have passed away after this life! What greater message has been uttered! Eteranal life. Ought we not to go to the Father in sincere prayer about this marvelous claim?

    Anyone can go to mormon.org and hear first hand from people why they joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. As the Church of Christ (as he founded it in the New Testament and then brough it back in our day through the prophet Joseph Smith) we invite other to accept as much of what we believe to be true as they will. No-one can be forced into conversion.

    We must go to the fountain of all truth and pray to our Heavenly Father. He has promised to answer the honest in heart who knock, it has always been opened to those who pray. He will anser by the power of the Holy Ghost.

    If we were to read the Book of Mormon and the Bible and study them together we would find something marvelous. This is proof that the boy Joseph Smith did indeed recieve a vision of the Father and the Son. As I live and as God lives, the Book of Mormon is true. It is a perfect God inspired compliment to the Bible. Far from competing with the Bible, the Book of Mormon supports it. Any honest person who has read it will not would not deny its truthfulness. It is that pure and true.

    Please go to mormon.org to learn for yourself. Why let those who disagree with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints make your opinion for you?

    If you lived during the time that Christ came in his mortal ministry would you have inquired about the Savior from someone that didn’t approve of him? Allow yourself to hear it from the Church and then ask God in prayer if it is true. This is my sincere plee. You alone can choose, that is the beauty of this message.

    We love and revere the Bible. We also declare that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. We should not have to apologize for the truth. I have seen the Book of Mormon change the lives of people, and improve the lives of good people who already believe in God and go to Church every Sunday. It is wonderfully true!

    Have you read this book? Please read it! We all know what the Lord has said about judjing others harshly. Read it and you will know, if that is what you desire. My dear friend, go and see mormon.org.
41. BC says:

    December 18, 2007 at 1:59 pm

    I am sorry to see that this post, during the course of the last year, went from a very good discussion based upon reason (see Matt’s and Max’s discussion above), to mere “fast and testimony” style testimonials. I appreciate Mr. Boman’s sincerity, but merely reading the BOM (and I have read it, just as I am sure Brad has) and feeling good about it does not amount to knowing that it’s true.
42. Latter-day Guy says:

    January 2, 2008 at 7:44 pm

    BC,
    I agree that it is unwise to use a post such as this for comments like the foregoing testimonial. It just isn’t the right forum. However, understand that your description of a spiritual manifestation of truth—”feeling good about it”—is as oversimplified and vexing (to Mormons) as some LDS descriptions of the Trinity as an amorphous blob-god are vexing to Catholics. The descriptions do not do justice to either concept. The doctrine of the Trinity is far more nuanced than Mormons give it credit, and the answers to prayer that LDS members speak of are just as real and vibrant to them as the apparition at Fatima was to three Portuguese children. (To clarify, they do not usually involve visions, but if you pin an LDS person down on a significant spiritual answer, you will see that they usually lack words adequate to describe it and must resort to ersatz phrases like “a peaceful feeling,” etc.).

    Now, Sage, it does not do justice to your cause to be less than concise, to “plee” with your readers, to counsel them about “jugjing” others, or to refrain from using spell check.
43. Tim says:

    January 6, 2008 at 12:43 pm

    Latter-day Guy,

    It’s interesting that you picked Fatima as a comparison to private answers to prayer. The final appearance at Fatima included the miracle of the sun, which was experienced by many more people than the three children, including a newspaper reporter who had ridiculed the earlier apparitions. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia’s article on the subject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Miracle_of_the_Sun):

    “Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was biblical as they stood bare-headed, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws — the sun ‘danced’ according to the typical expression of the people.” ― Avelino de Almeida,[18] writing for O Século (Portugal’s most widely-circulated[19] and influential newspaper, which was pro-government and anti-clerical at the time[18] Almeida’s previous articles had been to satirize the previously reported events at Fatima).[20]

    Something extraordinary, and unmistakably external to the three children, happened on October 13, 1917. In my mind, that puts Fatima in a different category than the vast majority of personal revelation.

    On another note, your comment seems to suggest that we should do our utmost to exercise charity in speaking of each other’s faiths, and I heartily agree.
44. Latter-day Guy says:

    January 6, 2008 at 8:15 pm

    Tim,

    Thanks for the response. Regarding Fatima, perhaps I was not clear enough (Brevis esse laboro, Obscurus fio!). What I meant to imply was that the conviction that comes as a result of personal revelation (having spoken with many LDS, and interested in this very subject, I have seen remarkable similarity–even unity–in their descriptions of the experiences themselves, but even more so in the immediate effect of these experiences) is no less powerful than the conviction that comes from visions of a more concrete nature.

    I have met many brilliant, analytical people (in particular, scientists) who, in spite of initial skepticism, had these experiences and were totally convinced. I don’t intend this anecdotal evidence to convince the average non-Mormon, but hope to suggest that these people be taken seriously, and at their word. In short, whatever phenomena they are describing, I think it is a mistake to dismiss their experiences with a phrase like “felt good about it.” (Interestingly, their descriptions echo one of your comments: though the experience was interior, there was an overwhelming sense that this was not emotion, that it came from somewhere else. As far as they could discern, these phenomena were external in origin.)

    Most importantly, I, like you, hope we can all do better in being charitable in our interactions. To do otherwise helps no one.
45. Carl Loeber says:

    January 18, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    what does this say to you ?

    Mark 10:18

    Jesus saith unto him .. Why callest thou me good ? There is none good but one … God
46. Mark says:

    June 4, 2008 at 2:39 am

    This text stuck my interest. It came from a book I read years ago….thoughts?

    …Mormons are all ignoramuses. You don’t even know the strength of your own position. It is so strong that there is only one other tenable in the whole Christian world, and that is the position of the Catholic Church. The issue is between Catholicism and Mormonism. If we are right, you are wrong; if you are right, we are wrong; and that’s all there is to it. The Protestants haven’t a leg to stand on. For, if we are wrong, they are wrong with us, since they were a part of us and went out from us; while if we are right, they are apostates whom we cut off long ago. If we have the apostolic succession from St. Peter, as we claim, there is no need of Joseph Smith and Mormonism; but if we have not that succession, then such a man as Joseph Smith was necessary, and Mormonism’s attitude is the only consistent one. It is either the perpetuation of the gospel from ancient times, or the restoration of the gospel in latter days.

    I thought this was interesting.

    Mark
47. Brad says:

    June 4, 2008 at 3:19 am

    Mark, I actually planned to post about that soon, as a Mormon blog somewhere was looking for the origin of that quote. (Well, the quote appears in A Marvelous Work and a Wonder by LeGrand Richards, but I mean who said it originally.) I’ll post about it when I find my bookmark of it.
48. Andreas says:

    July 23, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    Interesting debate, there are about 100 of these on the web. Since faith is the basis for all religious beliefs, I guess there is no definitive shred of evidence that supports anyone. I guess the only one who can tell us the difference between an original Rembrandt from a forgery is Rembrandt himself.

    I have studied at length, the history of 2nd, 3rd and 4th century Christianity and I find the concept of the Nicene Creed as an inspired document hard to believe. It was a great attempt to end the Arian / anti-Arian debate as to what Begotten really means.

    The debate was dividing Constantine’s empire, so he called the council and the creed was a product of compromise, not scripturally based truth. Platonian and Pagan views were a real threat to the early Church, and had to be folded into Orthodoxy. I don’t blame anyone for their attempts at truth and resolution to beliefs but it is almost stunningly blatant that there was a diversion from Christ’s doctrines. The nature of God went from a heavenly father figure to three people in one, a spirit essence with no body parts. No wonder a fourth Century Monk Cried out “Woe is me! They have taken my God away from me, … and I know not whom to adore or to address”.
49. Will says:

    August 8, 2008 at 3:45 am

    I just wanted to say thanks for this thread. The posts are for the most part intelligent and respectful by both Catholics and Mormons. I look foward to reading more of your ideas and opinions.
50. Alan says:

    August 24, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    I’ve enjoyed this thread. It’s always interesting to me that most of those who criticize The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as being non-Christian are not Catholic, but seem to come from the Protestant wing of “mainstream” Christianity. for this, I thank my Catholic brethren.

    Although centuries of persistence has worn away at that long lasting title given to Protestants of “heretic”, the bottom line is, Protestants cannot justify their inclusion in the Christian community because the many churches they are baptized into and take communion from have no apostolic authority to administer those sacraments or to even exist. It’s odd to me that they focus so much time on arguing over the term Christian with those of the Mormon faith. They don’t really seem to have the welfare of our souls in mind.

    In my opinion, either the Catholics are right or the Mormons; no one else has any valid argument.
    So to Protestant critics of the LDS church I would ask: Why then are you not Catholic? It is a “mainstream” Christian church, right? They are always giving a free pass to “mainstream” churches despite enormous differences in belief and practice.

    Much is made of Luther as the beginning of the reformation. Thanks to his arrival on the scene about the time of the printing press, this thought has prevailed. But we need to look 100 years earlier to Jan Huss. He gave his life for his mission and didn’t back down on his beliefs for the sake of political expediency (and his neck) as Luther did.

    I hope to be able to shed some light on this part of the restoration as my ancestors were directly affected.

    When my ancestors, followers of Jan Huss, split from the organized Catholic Church, they felt the Catholic priesthood had been corrupted through wickedness and that the priesthood authority to baptize, hear confessions, administer communion to the congregation, and preach the gospel had been lost. How could they “come unto” Christ without being baptized by someone with authority from Christ? Without an officially ordained priest, how could they follow Christ’s commandment to remember him by meeting together often and partaking of communion in remembrance of Him? Who among them could make either himself or another a teacher, a minister or a priest?

    After Huss was burned at the stake in Rome, his followers sent groups of men, two by two, around the known Christian world looking for a priest who could prove that his priesthood ordination drew it’s authority from an unbroken, uncorrupted chain back to the early apostles. They gathered after two years to report. Although valiant in their efforts, they were unsuccessful in their search. They tried again. Again they were unsuccessful. These early Hussites later became the Unitas Fratrum – the United Brethren – and later in America, the Moravian Church. Not finding what was essential to their worship, they rationalized their separation from the Catholic church and took upon themselves the claim of priesthood – that which cannot be bought or sold – to avoid having to go back to a dead church with a corrupt and fallen priesthood.

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stands separate from what was called a heresy for centuries by Kings, the Pope, the Cardinals, the Bishops and the priests of the Catholic church. The LDS church and the Catholic church both claim that the authority to fulfill Christ’s commission to take the gospel to all the ends of the earth has been given them by Jesus Christ himself.

    The Protestants and Catholics criticize the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints principally because the LDS strongly deny much of the Nicene Creed as stated above. Personally, my lifelong study of the Bible and my studies of the origin of the creed leaves many doubts as well about it. I greatly appreciate the prtestant Unitarian website that lists 100 scriptural proofs against the Nicene creed. They quote God’s word, not a council of men. It took, what, four centuries after Christ for men to decide who God is? In my studies of it’s origin, it appears to be more a politically expedient creed than a religious one. How do those same Protestants reconcile the “I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church”? Have the Protestants forgotten about that time honored creed out of convenience?

    My ancient family left the Catholic church in what is now Belgium in the 1400′s (just before the plague arrived) when one brother left his parents and his older brother, who was wealthily employed by the Prince-Bishop of Liege, sand fled to England to save his life. Eventually the family moved on to America and to the Wachovia settlement of Moravians in North Carolina in the 1700′s. As pioneers, they settled the land. Over time, outside influences entered their faith. The old church diaries that I have studied reveal a slow erosion of the faith.

    Christ did not mean for the confusion to last forever, but that truth would prevail. Now, as we near His glorious return and reign on the Earth, He calls again to gather His sheep one last time.

    I found the true, restored Church of Jesus Christ. I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and Redeemer and have been baptized by one having true authority from Jesus Christ. I am imperfect. I repent of my sins and partake of the sacrament of the Lord’s supper which is administered in both kinds by someone having authority from Jesus Christ. I am weak, but I am blessed to be taught the gospel of Jesus Christ in my native tongue by those having true authority from Jesus Christ himself and who are blessed with the gift of revelation from God through the Holy Ghost.

    My calling as a husband and a father came from God. But, the calling and authority to baptize, administer the sacraments and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ come as they always have in the scriptures, from the Savior, not well intentioned men who ordain each other or from a book.

    All of this bickering about interpretation of the scriptures or doctrines or practices is moot. It underscores that no one with true authority from God is in charge as well as the need for heavenly intervention and guideance. The true church of Jesus Christ teaches truth with authority and offers no apology, just as the Savior did in His ministry.

    I have found the church that my ancestors sought for so long ago. The true Church of Jesus Christ. I like the title of the faith of my ancestors – Unitas Fratrum. Brethren, let us be united and “one” in truth.