The Origin and Literal Fatherhood of God

[_asbestosman]

Which infinity?
c? aleph_0? aleph_1, aleph^aleph? The first inaccessible cardinal? Infinite volume manifolds? The class of all classes?
On what do you base your assertion? It can't be your knowlege of transfinite arithmetic.

Can man understand the infinitesimal?

We could always combine the the infinitesimal with the infinite using Dirac Delta notation.

I think in general though, we often have the inability to really understand what it'd be like. what would it be like to experience four spatial dimensions or maybe aleph_0 such spatial dimensions? We can describe a few things, but there is much we won't be able to understand without actually experiencing it.

[_Jason Bourne]

I agree with Stephen Robinson on this one. thought not canonized the KFD and the ideas taught are quasi official because of the level of use and reference this discourse had receieved. The basic concepts are official doctrine-God was once a man and we can become gods. Now exactly how God was a man and what it means for us to become gods I think can be debated and a number of reasonable conclusions that may differ in view can be reached. For example, my read of the KFD leads me to conclude that God was not a man just like us. Rather, he was a man like Jesus. He was the creator of a world, in my opinion, the first world ever and he was the savior of that world.

The idea that the Father was a savior as Jesus himself has been taken up by other LDS authors, but the bolded phrase interests me. As the KFD itself seems to indicate that there has never been a time when there were no gods engaging in creative activities and providing mortal experiences for their children, where do you get the idea that our world was the "first world"? The first world in our universe of 100 billion galaxies? The first world in any reality anywhere throughout eternity? That would seem to contradict the ideas of the KFD, which posit an endless, beginningless regression into the past within which the plan of salvation has always been in operation and through which our Father progressed to his present condition. As Joseph said, our task is to become gods as all gods have done before us. This phrase includes our Father in Heaven but explicitly references innumerable other beings of equivalent stature.

I do not think ours was the first world. I think there may hve been a first world. And I think it was a sermon after the KFD where Joseph put forth the idea of God having a father and on and on and on. But I could be mistaken. I would have to go back and review it. But ther is no question Joseph tossed such an idea out. But here is the rub. The D&C in Section 121 talks about the possibility of many gods but then references a Head God of all other gods. I think this is why Ostler argues that the idea of an infinite regression of gods is contradicted by canon. I think he is correct. At least as far as the standard works goes I do not think tis concept is tenable.


Recently I listened to a podcast from Van Hale's radio show Mormon Miscellaneous. Ostler was the guest. Van Hale is more on your side of the fence and they went round and round on this subject. You might want to go to the web page and look it up.

http://mormonmisc.podbean.com/

I believe the eternal existence of intelligences is official LDS doctrine and canonized in scripture. So yes, we have always existed in some form. The idea that there is an infinite regression of Gods is, in my opinion, speculative and non official LDS doctrine.

Well this is one of the points I wanted to get at. While I agree it is "unofficial", outside of Blake Ostler and perhaps a few other LDS intellectuals, most members, at least those I have known in my 40 some years, would balk at a label of "speculative"

Joseph, and other prophets since his time who have articulated this doctrine (Joseph Fielding Smith say), have clearly not understood it as speculative.

It may be less than speculative because it has been referenced and discussed quite extensively. But if Canon and official pronouncements by the FP are the hard line to measure doctrine against I think it is very proper to put this in the realm of speculative. It seems to have fallen out of favor to a certian extent.

The idea that our particular Father in Heaven is, in some sense, the first god of all gods, seems to smack of the very Alexandrian philosophical assumptions that initiated much of the Great Apostasy in the first place. I say this because it implies some kind of transcendent metaphysical novelty to our Father that both undoes the eternal continuity of the plan of salvation and seems to reintroduce to the Gospel the idea that, before this god existed, there was a void of irreducible ontological nothingness and that the plan of salvation is, therefore, in a very real sense, the de novo creation of God the Father, as if he and he alone were responsible for reality itself.

Oh I am not so certian about this. The idea that there was at least One Head God seems fairly biblical. I find nothing in scripture that lends to the idea of an infinite regression of Gods.

I do not believe it can be confirmed from LDS canon and in fact conflicts with it. Prophets and apostles certainly have taught the concept though so I may be all wet. Yet if one can set aside less pleasant teachings from Prophets that we do not like why not this one? It seems to me that God the Eternal Father was at least the first God and has existed for all eternity. He is the head God of all other gods. He created the first world and was a savior for it and started the ball rolling so to speak.

Well, of course, anything that comes through the spirit of prophesy is scripture, so that canon is open ended and keeps growing, even when doctrinal truths are not canonized officially.

Well not really at least as far as apologists are concerned. A lot of what you may think comes by the spirit of prophecy other relegate to opinion of men. This one included.

[_harmony]

Personally, Ill take Brigham Young and Joseph Smith over Blake Ostler and Robert Millet anyday.

Why? Because they claimed to be prophets, while Blake and Robert make no such claim?

[_Coggins7]

Flake off Harmony, this thread is not for the likes of you.

[_Coggins7]

I do not think ours was the first world. I think there may hve been a first world. And I think it was a sermon after the KFD where Joseph put forth the idea of God having a father and on and on and on. But I could be mistaken. I would have to go back and review it. But ther is no question Joseph tossed such an idea out. But here is the rub. The D&C in Section 121 talks about the possibility of many gods but then references a Head God of all other gods. I think this is why Ostler argues that the idea of an infinite regression of gods is contradicted by canon. I think he is correct. At least as far as the standard works goes I do not think tis concept is tenable.

The problem here, however, is assuming this to mean a head God that is somehow the central divine figure throughout all possible and existing cosmoses. The Father would be, of course, the head God of his spirit children who attained godhood, which, over time, would be a vast number. I see no such problem in the standard works when taken as a whole, only when certain scriptures are isolated and an attempt is made to use them as proof texts for the anti-infinite regression concept. There are veres, of course, primarily in the Old Testament, that seem to say exactly this. However, whether the full meaning and implication of those texts is available in a surface reading of those texts, if taken just at face value, is another question. To Israel, for Israel, and regarding Israel, there was no other God. None before, and none after (which would call into question the messiahship of Christ, and which, for the Jews, indeed does) There are also a number of verses in the Old Testament that declare the laws and ritual observances of the Law of Moses to be eternal, but of course, this cannot be understood to mean "permanent" in a literal sense with respect to the human race or the House of Israel. In the same manner, we have no other God, before, nor in the future, other than our Father. The bare existence of other gods equal to him in power and intelligence changes nothing regarding his Priesthood authority and its scope. If Jesus did nothing other than what he saw his Father do, then the implication must be that the Father was, at one time, a spirit son of his own Father in Heaven, existed in a preexistent state, became mortal and underwent the trials and challenges of mortality, died, was resurrected, and exalted. We are now his children and he is our Heavenly Father. If Jesus was following a pattern, and not a novel mode of existence, then the Father must have been a participant in that same patter (the plan of salvation).

Oh I am not so certian about this. The idea that there was at least One Head God seems fairly biblical. I find nothing in scripture that lends to the idea of an infinite regression of Gods.

Yes, its biblical, but the problem of interpretation still remains. The other problem, and the central problem I have with Ostler's view, is the idea that, in some manner, our Father in Heaven is ontologically unique to the degree that he somehow transcends the natural principles (development and progression from essence, to intelligence, to mortal organism, to divinity) apparently followed by all other gods except himself. The question of the origin of God is much better served, in my view, by the ideas of the KFD (godhood understood as the outcome of a long process of development from embryonic state to fully mature state) than through speculations positing a God that in some manner transcends the principle of eternal progression itself and was, in some incomprehensible way, always just there and always is a "head god" in a way in which other "head gods" are not.

Ostler's views also, as mentioned before, evaporates the great continuity of the plan of salvation back into the endless past by making our particular Father in Heaven an absolute temporal and ontological barrier to anything proceeding himself.