CWK: Becoming a god: deification in Mormonism and Orthodox theosis

[Markk]

Was becoming a God (in Mormonism) made possible by practicing The Principle?

It is the only way according to section 132. It has been watered down since to just a temple marriage as a requirement to eternal life, but 132 was originally plural marriage.

[Markk]

And you are in denial. Kish, he brought girls into his home, and when the blossomed into young women, he married them behind folks back, even Emma, and had sex with them in his home even while they called Emma, aunt Emma.

My assertion and accusation is not just a stab in the dark, it is documented truth.

Markk, you are interested in one thing that you are satisfied is true. You morally object to Smith’s behavior. All you need to do is to keep reminding yourself of that conclusion, and you remain satisfied. Other people who are looking for other things can pursue those avenues of investigation, and they are not likely to be moved by your little self-soothing exercise.

I am not interested in exculpating Smith, so I have no interest in your argument. For me, this is not about reminding myself why I am not LDS. I am comfortable with the facts and happy to pursue my own investigation of the full complexity of Smith’s activities. I don’t need to approve or disapprove of them to do so.

But, please feel free to rub your security blanket, if you need to. Maybe you can drag a couple of other people out of the LDS Church in the process. That, too, is of no interest to me.

Huh? I am interested in many things....Why are you so butt hurt? Smith was far more that just a womanizer....he was also a charlatan, a thief, and much more, including a piss poor husband and father. The question I was and am responding to is deification and Mormonism. You can deny, twist, or run away from the plain and simple fact that Joseph promised deification to women and even girls, with the promise of deification for them and their families. Read the happiness letter. If you want to deny this fine, but don't get butt hurt when folks state other wise on a forum that invites such discussion.

[Kishkumen]

Huh? I am interested in many things....Why are you so butt hurt? Smith was far more that just a womanizer....he was also a charlatan, a thief, and much more, including a piss poor husband and father. The question I was and am responding to is deification and Mormonism. You can deny, twist, or run away from the plain and simple fact that Joseph promised deification to women and even girls, with the promise of deification for them and their families. Read the happiness letter. If you want to deny this fine, but don't get butt hurt when folks state other wise on a forum that invites such discussion.

Far be it from me to suggest that you are not allowed to bore me to tears with your liturgy of moral outrage! I know the facts as well as you do, mate. Thanks for making my point for me. If anyone is butthurt, your post is oozing with it. Your contention was that sex was THE reason for polygamy and deification. You have yet to show that, and in fact you can’t. But you won’t let that stop you. What you have going for you here is a very sympathetic readership.

[Markk]

Huh? I am interested in many things....Why are you so butt hurt? Smith was far more that just a womanizer....he was also a charlatan, a thief, and much more, including a piss poor husband and father. The question I was and am responding to is deification and Mormonism. You can deny, twist, or run away from the plain and simple fact that Joseph promised deification to women and even girls, with the promise of deification for them and their families. Read the happiness letter. If you want to deny this fine, but don't get butt hurt when folks state other wise on a forum that invites such discussion.

Far be it from me to suggest that you are not allowed to bore me to tears with your liturgy of moral outrage! I know the facts as well as you do, mate. Thanks for making my point for me. If anyone is butthurt, your post is oozing with it. Your contention was that sex was THE reason for polygamy and deification. You have yet to show that, and in fact you can’t. But you won’t let that stop you. What you have going for you here is a very sympathetic readership.

LOL. Kish you sound like a DCP here, your retort is nothing more than a mopolic dodge. My posts are clear....Joseph induced women and young girls, for sex, under the pretense that they could have everlasting life (deification) if they agreed to enter into a relationship with him, which included sexual relationships....even young girls that he and his unknowing wife basically adopted. It is just historical fact. I challenge your here and now to refute that.

We can certainly start with Fanny, and move forward to Nancy Rigdon, the two sets of twins he took advantage of in his home, and many more. We can go through Claytons journal, the expositor, the Law's, Bennett, and many other histories of his "travels.'

This is not about me. If you actually believe that Joseph some how taught deification apart form internal increase by sexual relationships and plural marriage....please show me where he taught that to the folks? The floor is yours! Please don't let the key board stop you.

I'll make it easy on you, start by explaining what the ELC is and what it demanded in Nauvoo, start with Claytons journal. You can also explain why Emma was the 20 something wife sealed to him, and what that implies.

[Zosimus]

This one I really enjoyed doing because I think it is educational, it respects the differences between Mormon deification and Orthodox theosis, and it points out what I think is an important difference between Mormonism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy, on the one hand, and Protestantism, on the other, especially as regards the role of ritual in the divination process.

I recently fell down a related rabbit hole and have been dying to discuss with someone. Tried to boot up a conversation on that other board, but maybe the topic is just too far afield.

The short version is: the contents of the Book of Mormon, particularly Ether, were influenced by orientalist thinkers, and their writings on what they referred to in the 17th/18th centuries as gentooism, gentoo being the Portuguese term for gentile. I know its off-putting at first, but bear with me.

You're probably familiar with Lucy Mack's story of Asael Smith visiting them in Turnbridge, and throwing a copy of Thomas Paine's Age of Reason at Joseph Sr., imploring him to read it until he believed it. A few decades later, a member of the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont wrote a letter intended for Joseph Smith Jr. The letter seemingly confirms that Sr. was familiar with Paine and Age of Reason, and another radical enlightenment-era deist:

"You must well remember his frequent declarations that the whole Bible was the work of priestcraft, and that no Nation was so enlightened, but it could be made to believe in any religion however absurd it might be, if it was advocated perseveringly for fifty years, it would become the popular religion of the country, and as good as any other; that Voltaires writings were the best Bible then extant, and Thomas Paines age of reason, the best commentary. It appears that he undertook to make his word good in trying a new religion and obtaining a few knaves to help start it."

Voltaire? The best Bible? So I went through Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, and I don't know where to even start. Here's just one example related to the topic of deification. Voltaire's entry for the topic of Angels in summary:

1. An eternal God, absorbed in the contemplation of His own existence, resolved, in the fulness of time, to communicate His glory and His essence to beings capable of feeling and partaking His beatitude as well as of contributing to His glory.
2. God forms angels partly of His own essence, capable of perfection or imperfection, according to their will.
3. The Eternal divides the angelic army into several bands, and gave to each a chief. They adored the Eternal, ranged around His throne, each in the degree assigned him.
4. The angel who was "chief of the first band" becomes envious and rejects "the power of perfection" by exercising his "power of imperfection"
5. Other angels join his band, they go through the celestial creation recruiting other angels, declaring: “we will govern”
6. God, whose omniscience, prescience, and influence extended over all things except the action of the beings whom He has created free, beheld with grief and anger the rebellion of the various chiefs of the angels.
7. Yet confirmed in their spirit of independence, the rebel angels persisted in their revolt.
8. After some time, the first created angel (associated with Jesus) petitions for the rebel angels to be pardoned. Earth is created as a place of probation and rehabilitation for the angels.

That's just one single entry in an entire dictionary that, in my opinion, is a likely candidate for Joseph Smith Sr's "Best Bible" award

And if you go to the source of Voltaire's account, a British diplomat named Holwell who forged a set of ancient Indian scriptures to fill the gaps in the Old Testament, things get even more bizarre. At the core is an effort to restore the pure ancient theology alongside a sort of Pythagorean/Platonic metempsychosis/theosis

[Kishkumen]

LOL. Kish you sound like a DCP here, your retort is nothing more than a mopolic dodge. My posts are clear....Joseph induced women and young girls, for sex, under the pretense that they could have everlasting life (deification) if they agreed to enter into a relationship with him, which included sexual relationships....even young girls that he and his unknowing wife basically adopted. It is just historical fact. I challenge your here and now to refute that.

We can certainly start with Fanny, and move forward to Nancy Rigdon, the two sets of twins he took advantage of in his home, and many more. We can go through Claytons journal, the expositor, the Law's, Bennett, and many other histories of his "travels.'

This is not about me. If you actually believe that Joseph some how taught deification apart form internal increase by sexual relationships and plural marriage....please show me where he taught that to the folks? The floor is yours! Please don't let the key board stop you.

I'll make it easy on you, start by explaining what the ELC is and what it demanded in Nauvoo, start with Claytons journal. You can also explain why Emma was the 20 something wife sealed to him, and what that implies.

Agreeing with you on the basic facts sounds like DCP? Conceding that polygamy has something to do with sex sounds like DCP? Which DCP are you talking about exactly?

So now you concede, I see, that eternal increase is part of it, which means that sex was not an end in itself. Thanks!

Here’s the thing, and I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: he was able to have sex without polygamy and without deification. He had affairs. He visited prostitutes. Smith had sex all the time. So why, if sex was the point, did he need either polygamy or deification?

[I Have Questions]

He visited prostitutes.

What???

[Zosimus]

He visited prostitutes.

What???

username checks out

[Markk]

Kish wrote...Agreeing with you on the basic facts sounds like DCP? Conceding that polygamy has something to do with sex sounds like DCP? Which DCP are you talking about exactly?

Your saying ..." Far be it from me to suggest that you are not allowed to bore me to tears with your liturgy of moral outrage! ", in other words whing and by playing a victim because I dared to disagree with you.

Kish wrote..."So now you concede, I see, that eternal increase is part of it, which means that sex was not an end in itself. Thanks!"

Focus, for Joseph, the sex was the real and tangible part of the con, the promise of eternal increase was the prop for his con to get the sex he desired. You are not helping yourself with this type of approach Kish. As I wrote the promise was a means to the end to get in the pants of these women.

Kish wrote...Here’s the thing, and I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: he was able to have sex without polygamy and without deification. He had affairs. He visited prostitutes. Smith had sex all the time. So why, if sex was the point, did he need either polygamy or deification?

It was a tool and prop for his con, and it worked rather well for him for a season, at least until it caught up with him. The sex part of this was real, the power grab was real, eeking out a living was real.....the promise that these folks can become God's, was the con. It is really not that hard to see and understand.

[Kishkumen]

I recently fell down a related rabbit hole and have been dying to discuss with someone. Tried to boot up a conversation on that other board, but maybe the topic is just too far afield.

The short version is: the contents of the Book of Mormon, particularly Ether, were influenced by orientalist thinkers, and their writings on what they referred to in the 17th/18th centuries as gentooism, gentoo being the Portuguese term for gentile. I know its off-putting at first, but bear with me.

You're probably familiar with Lucy Mack's story of Asael Smith visiting them in Turnbridge, and throwing a copy of Thomas Paine's Age of Reason at Joseph Sr., imploring him to read it until he believed it. A few decades later, a member of the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont wrote a letter intended for Joseph Smith Jr. The letter seemingly confirms that Sr. was familiar with Paine and Age of Reason, and another radical enlightenment-era deist:

"You must well remember his frequent declarations that the whole Bible was the work of priestcraft, and that no Nation was so enlightened, but it could be made to believe in any religion however absurd it might be, if it was advocated perseveringly for fifty years, it would become the popular religion of the country, and as good as any other; that Voltaires writings were the best Bible then extant, and Thomas Paines age of reason, the best commentary. It appears that he undertook to make his word good in trying a new religion and obtaining a few knaves to help start it."

Voltaire? The best Bible? So I went through Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, and I don't know where to even start. Here's just one example related to the topic of deification. Voltaire's entry for the topic of Angels in summary:

1. An eternal God, absorbed in the contemplation of His own existence, resolved, in the fulness of time, to communicate His glory and His essence to beings capable of feeling and partaking His beatitude as well as of contributing to His glory.
2. God forms angels partly of His own essence, capable of perfection or imperfection, according to their will.
3. The Eternal divides the angelic army into several bands, and gave to each a chief. They adored the Eternal, ranged around His throne, each in the degree assigned him.
4. The angel who was "chief of the first band" becomes envious and rejects "the power of perfection" by exercising his "power of imperfection"
5. Other angels join his band, they go through the celestial creation recruiting other angels, declaring: “we will govern”
6. God, whose omniscience, prescience, and influence extended over all things except the action of the beings whom He has created free, beheld with grief and anger the rebellion of the various chiefs of the angels.
7. Yet confirmed in their spirit of independence, the rebel angels persisted in their revolt.
8. After some time, the first created angel (associated with Jesus) petitions for the rebel angels to be pardoned. Earth is created as a place of probation and rehabilitation for the angels.

That's just one single entry in an entire dictionary that, in my opinion, is a likely candidate for Joseph Smith Sr's "Best Bible" award

And if you go to the source of Voltaire's account, a British diplomat named Holwell who forged a set of ancient Indian scriptures to fill the gaps in the Old Testament, things get even more bizarre. At the core is an effort to restore the pure ancient theology alongside a sort of Pythagorean/Platonic metempsychosis/theosis

Wow! That is incredibly fascinating, Zosimus. I knew I could count on an alchemist to say something worth reading.

(Aside to Markk: Zosimus has written something that does not bore me but instead really fascinates me. I offer this aside to let you reflect on the difference.)

I would definitely be interested in discussing this. It probably deserves a thread of its own. The thread I am not clear on, but nevertheless interests me, is this "gentooism" you mention.