Most profound heresy against the Christian Faith

[_Valorius]

Well put, MCB. "God is not man..." and "God is 'Spirit'" in (in my opinion) a transcendent sense, not the exact same nature as our 'spirits'.

The sum of it is that our God transcends all--God is beyond human understanding and description. The Mormon god is anthropomorphized to the point that men can become gods. The Mormon god is so limited as to not be our God.

I think this is best characterized by the Jewish trdition that the name of God is not to be uttered. The Mormon tradition is more like Zeus, with very human emotions.

The most important thing is that the Mormon god did not create the universe-- but only assembled the Earth from fragments of previously existing planets.

[_moksha]

Apology of Aristides (2nd century):
"I say, then, that God is not born, not made, an ever-abiding nature without beginning and without end, immortal, perfect, and incomprehensible.

It seems obvious that Aristides was unaware of Star Trek episode 1, Encounter at Farpoint, in which the Q are revealed as immortal, perfect and incomprehensible beings who through an indeterminable number of generations evolved into the Continuum. Perhaps the Greek philosophical school of Christianity was not ready for this revealed information, since they had not achieved warp capability.

So there.

[_MCB]

Acts 17 http://www.usccb.org/nab/Bible/acts/acts17.htm

Now all the Athenians as well as the foreigners residing there used their time for nothing else but telling or hearing something new.
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Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said: 6 "You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious.
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For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, 'To an Unknown God.' 7 What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.
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The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands,
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nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything.
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He made from one 8 the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions,
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so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us.
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For 'In him we live and move and have our being,' 9 as even some of your poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
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Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.
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God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent
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because he has established a day on which he will 'judge the world with justice' through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead."
32
When they heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, "We should like to hear you on this some other time."

If you will read I and II Maccabees, you will discover that there was plenty of Jewish/Greek interaction in the centuries preceeding Jesus. The Greeks probably found the concept of an infinite God quite interesting. They wanted Judaism without all the rules.

Snorre Sturlason also held to a theory that the pagan gods were people who received honored status long after their deaths. The Catholic concept of saints keeps this human tendency in check.

[_basilII]

Apology of Aristides (2nd century):
"I say, then, that God is not born, not made, an ever-abiding nature without beginning and without end, immortal, perfect, and incomprehensible.

It seems obvious that Aristides was unaware of Star Trek episode 1, Encounter at Farpoint, in which the Q are revealed as immortal, perfect and incomprehensible beings who through an indeterminable number of generations evolved into the Continuum. Perhaps the Greek philosophical school of Christianity was not ready for this revealed information, since they had not achieved warp capability.

So there.

Sure, we have the huge advantage of hundreds of Star Trek episodes to draw from. Its an unfair comparison. The ancients had a few half baked plays and some poorly written epics.

[_basilII]

The Christian view of the nature of God the Father is not the result of some sort of gradual assimilation of Greek thought over centuries. The basic ideas of God being uncreated, infinite,and immaterial are right there in second century. Its there in the writings of the apostle John as well. The apostles must have been the worlds worst teachers because all the churches they founded immediately fell into the same apostate doctrines on God. And it makes no sense to argue that the early Christians caved in on the most fundamental question of the nature of God and yet stood firm against Greek thought on things like the Incarnation and the resurrection. And I have read the early church fathers, so selective quotation of them won't work on me.