Fundamental Mormon Claims

[_Markk]

I take it that you weren't in the audience at the just-concluded annual meeting of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology.

Great, then we can expect a book/s written and/or approved by the GA that will clear up deep LDS core theology. How many GA were there? How many members were there...How many members were invited?

I'm not at all clear as to what the passage just quoted says. But that's fine, because I don't care much, either.

It was a general statement Dan

????

Wanna discuss the LDS concept of how God became God? In all the years we have been wasting our time on these boards you avoid discussing theology like the plague....go ahead you start...How did Elohim become a God, give me a couple of good LDS cfs. Maybe we can discuss and dig into how intelligence becomes a spirit child?

Of what, exactly?

Give me quick paragraph or so on BY teaching at conference that Adam was the father of mans spirit?

Mark

[_Daniel Peterson]

Great, then we can expect a book/s written and/or approved by the GA that will clear up deep LDS core theology. How many GA were there? How many members were there...How many members were invited?

Stop trying to change the subject, to move the goal posts.

You alleged that Mormon scholars won't touch such topics. You alleged falsely. That's it. Period.

Wanna discuss the LDS concept of how God became God?

No.

In all the years we have been wasting our time on these boards you avoid discussing theology like the plague....

That's correct. I'm not going to do theology in any serious way on an internet message board, and certainly not on one such as this.

You'll survive.

go ahead you start...How did Elohim become a God, give me a couple of good LDS cfs. Maybe we can discuss and dig into how intelligence becomes a spirit child?

I'm not interested in discussing these matters with you in the first place, but also can't imagine where you think you would "dig" to find information that hasn't been revealed.

I expect that you, too, know better.

Give me quick paragraph or so on BY teaching at conference that Adam was the father of mans spirit?

I won't give you anything -- quick or slow, paragraph-length or shorter or longer -- and you know it.

Accordingly, as you also know, such demands are pointless.

[_Markk]

Hi Dan

Stop trying to change the subject, to move the goal posts.
You alleged that Mormon scholars won't touch such topics. You alleged falsely. That's it. Period

.

Your wrong, this is what I wrote..."I believe that teachings like this is one reason why LDS scholars and current GAdo not dig too deep into LDS theology in that it stops with past GA’s and their teachings…"

Scholars and GA's Dan, my point is that LDS theology is and has been in limbo since at least the early 70's. For a church that has restored the truth, it fails to communicate what they actually believe about core issues that were very clearly taught in the past. I never said they wouldn't touch doctrine, I said they wouldn't dig too deep, and that it stops with past GA's...who's changing the context Dan.

I'm not interested in discussing these matters with you in the first place, but also can't imagine where you think you would "dig" to find information that hasn't been revealed.

Well Dan it was certainly taught in LDS teaching manuals and books written by GA's and published by the church as authoritative. I believe that is enough to start with. In a past melk. teaching manual it has a chapter heading "How God became God", that is a good place to start.

mark

[_Daniel Peterson]

Stop trying to change the subject, to move the goal posts.
You alleged that Mormon scholars won't touch such topics. You alleged falsely. That's it. Period

.
Your wrong, this is what I wrote..."I believe that teachings like this is one reason why LDS scholars and current GAdo not dig too deep into LDS theology in that it stops with past GA’s and their teachings…"

Scholars and GA's Dan,

When you assert "p and q," you assert p.

You assertion p is false.

I've proven that.

If you wish to have your speculation concerning the motives of General Authorities confirmed, you should write to the General Authorities. Though I'm confident that, as you generally are, you're wrong, I don't speak for them.

my point is that LDS theology is and has been in limbo since at least the early 70's.

I lived through the early seventies, was even a missionary during that period, and I don't see anything like what you claim. See my opening post on this thread.

Merely repeating that it's all confused, confusing, and up in the air won't establish that your claim is true, and certainly won't do so in my case, overriding my own personal experience.

But I'll take you at your word: Since you are completely unable, as you say, to determine where the Church stands on core issues, you have no basis for disagreement with the Church's stance on any such issues. You're unable to tell what it even is.

Hence, for the sake of consistency, you've decided to give up on opposing and disagreeing with the Church's impossible-to-discover positions on fundamental issues.

I commend you for this.

For a church that has restored the truth, it fails to communicate what they actually believe about core issues that were very clearly taught in the past. I never said they wouldn't touch doctrine, I said they wouldn't dig too deep,

Your notion of "core doctrine" doesn't seem to fit mine. I've never thought that the details of the mortal life of the Father, or of exactly how "intelligences" become "spirits," were "core doctrine," nor even known. I've certainly never known such things.

and that it stops with past GA's...who's changing the context Dan.

I have no idea. I can't even tell what you're saying in this little quotation. What stops? What context? What are you talking about?

Well Dan it was certainly taught in LDS teaching manuals and books written by GA's and published by the church as authoritative. I believe that is enough to start with. In a past melk. teaching manual it has a chapter heading "How God became God", that is a good place to start.

Then go ahead and lay it out in great detail.

I've never read any such details in any Church manual, and can scarcely contain my excitement about the new things I'm going to learn.

[_Markk]

What stop with past GA's (Joseph Smith, BY, OP,JFS, JFS jr, MH, BM...etc) is defining LDS core thought, but I bet you know that , whether you admit it or not.

Define the law of eternal progression for us...where does mankind/god-kind begin.

I discussed this with you sometime ago and you said that you had recently got a copy of 'Gospel through the Ages' from your in laws, have you read it yet?

Get out of your comfort zone Dan and actually try to articulate a response without cut and pasting sniplets out of context.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Come on, Dr. Peterson. Markk is one of the most polite and humble posters on *any* board, and he doesn't deserve to be treated with the sort of condescension and disrespect that you've been doling out. Try to maintain a little civility, eh? This is the Celestial Forum, after all.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Scratch is certainly determined.

And his newly adopted role as Board Advocate of Respect and Civility . . . What a card!

What stop with past GA's (Joseph Smith, BY, OP,JFS, JFS jr, MH, BM...etc) is defining LDS core thought, but I bet you know that , whether you admit it or not.

I not only don't know that, I can't decode what you've written.

Define the law of eternal progression for us...where does mankind/god-kind begin.

If a definition of where humankind and the Gods began is an old but now suppressed core doctrine of Mormonism, as you seem to be implying, that suppression has to have occurred prior to the time, in 1842, when W. W. Phelps wrote these hymn lyrics:

If you could hie to Kolob in the twinkling of an eye,
And then continue onward with that same speed to fly,
Do you think that you could ever, through all eternity,
Find out the generation where Gods began to be?

I discussed this with you sometime ago and you said that you had recently got a copy of 'Gospel through the Ages' from your in laws, have you read it yet?

Yes. Of course I've read it.

So are you contending that the core doctrines of Mormonism, now suppressed, were announced in a long-out-of-print book written by a now largely-forgotten member of the Seventy and published in 1945 by the long-defunct Stevens & Wallis Company?

Get out of your comfort zone Dan

Why? Nothing you've written in this thread has required even a shifting of my position in my easy chair.

and actually try to articulate a response without cut and pasting sniplets out of context.

What "sniplets" have I "cut and pasted"? What are you talking about?

[_Joseph]

So when do you think Mormons will walk back to Missouri to visit with the returning Jesus?

[_Markk]

Hi Dan,

I not only don't know that, I can't decode what you've written.

LoL, Okay, I will play...Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, Joseph Fielding Smith,Joseph F. Smith Jr., Milton Hunter, and Bruce McKonkie. They wrote books like ...Doctrines of Salvation, Religious Truths Defined, Gospel Through The Ages, and Mormon Doctrine...all of which deal with core LDS doctrine and thought. Today, and correct me if I'm wrong, LDS leadership do not define these core doctrines anymore. So when I wrote that core LDS stops with these past LDS apostles and prophets ( and one seventy who wrote with help and encouragement of apostles prophets) that is what I meant. If I am incorrect here Dan, give me the tile of books written by current prophets and apostles that deal with the core doctrine like these books and men dealt with.

take care
Mark

[_Fence Sitter]

I think the short answer is that the leadership of the Church stopped doing or encouraging theology a while ago. When I asked why, Dan told me what we do is history and there is really no place for a paid clergy in the Church. We have never had a paid clergy, but that did not stop the Church from having some pretty good theologians in leadership for the first hundred years.

I know some won't agree with this but to me, at least, it looks like the Church discourages critical thinking and encourages correlated faith promoting study.