Do YOU believe that the nature of God is dependent on the nature of man?
Example: does my birthday remotely effect God and His majesty?
Are Mormons Christians? (Latter Day Saints)
- Thread starter jessicaleks93
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Example: does my birthday remotely effect God and His majesty?
BS.
Own your actions: every time you claim "Mormons aren't Christian" you are also saying "Jane, you aren't a Christian". Your words are addressing actual people, like myself.
amigo de christo
Well-Known Member
NOPE . GOD is GOD and His nature changes not . The problem is man .
amigo de christo
Well-Known Member
whether one does good or evil it dont affect the nature of GOD at all .
When I look at CC doctrine (Catholic Church), I find many things that are in flat out disagreement with the Bible. And yet I happen to think that there are people who are in the CC who are born again, and are alive in Christ, even though I believe their church is in serious error.
So you see I am able to distinguish between the overall teachings of an organization, and an individual member within that organization.
Now tell me . . .
Is there anything I've posted here that is untrue?
Much love!
amigo de christo
Well-Known Member
do opinions matter so much that is causes lack of sleep .
SHOO WEE , you should see what many call me . but i dont whine about it non stop .
cause i know its not true and it matters not what one do say about me .
This gen wines way too much . as for me , so be it , whatever man do to me and call me
is not gonna affect my faith , my hope , my joy or well being , IT COMETH OF GOD . this world will hate me
and so will false believers . and that is a fact too . But oh well , let them say as they will . I will continue to expose their false doctrines .
Does God's nature and acclaim depend on when I was born? I'd say no, but that seems to be an overly simplistic question more designed to hide truth than to reveal it.
Much love!
amigo de christo
Well-Known Member
correct my friend . correct indeed . i seen this approach in many a person too . always to oversimplfly in order to Justify
something NOT TRUE . it happens quite a lot too
The problem is the LDS teaching that God the Father is a spirit just like we are, and one day we may be a "God the Father".
Becoming Like God
Just as children can develop the attributes of their parents, each of us has the potential to become like our Heavenly Father.
www.churchofjesuschrist.org
Becoming Like God
One of the most common images in Western and Eastern religions alike is of God as a parent and of human beings as God’s children. Billions pray to God as their parent, invoke the brotherhood and sisterhood of all people to promote peace, and reach out to the weary and troubled out of deep conviction that each of God’s children has great worth.
But people of different faiths understand the parent-child relationship between God and humans in significantly different ways. Some understand the phrase “child of God” as an honorary title reserved only for those who believe in God and accept His guidance as they might accept a father’s. Many see parent-child descriptions of God’s relationship to humanity as metaphors to express His love for His creations and their dependence on His sustenance and protection.
Latter-day Saints see all people as children of God in a full and complete sense; they consider every person divine in origin, nature, and potential. Each has an eternal core and is “a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents.”1 Each possesses seeds of divinity and must choose whether to live in harmony or tension with that divinity. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, all people may “progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny.”2 Just as a child can develop the attributes of his or her parents over time, the divine nature that humans inherit can be developed to become like their Heavenly Father’s.
The desire to nurture the divinity in His children is one of God’s attributes that most inspires, motivates, and humbles members of the Church. God’s loving parentage and guidance can help each willing, obedient child of God receive of His fulness and of His glory. This knowledge transforms the way Latter-day Saints see their fellow human beings. The teaching that men and women have the potential to be exalted to a state of godliness clearly expands beyond what is understood by most contemporary Christian churches and expresses for the Latter-day Saints a yearning rooted in the Bible to live as God lives, to love as He loves, and to prepare for all that our loving Father in Heaven wishes for His children.
What does the Bible say about humans’ divine potential?
Several biblical passages intimate that humans can become like God. The likeness of humans to God is emphasized in the first chapter of Genesis: “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. … So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”3 After Adam and Eve partook of the fruit of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” God said they had “become as one of us,”4 suggesting that a process of approaching godliness was already underway. Later in the Old Testament, a passage in the book of Psalms declares, “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.”5New Testament passages also point to this doctrine. When Jesus was accused of blasphemy on the grounds that “thou, being a man, makest thyself God,” He responded, echoing Psalms, “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?”6 In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus commanded His disciples to become “perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”7 In turn, the Apostle Peter referred to the Savior’s “exceeding great and precious promises” that we might become “partakers of the divine nature.”8 The Apostle Paul taught that we are “the offspring of God” and emphasized that as such “we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”9 The book of Revelation contains a promise from Jesus Christ that “to him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.”10
These passages can be interpreted in different ways. Yet by viewing them through the clarifying lens of revelations received by Joseph Smith, Latter-day Saints see these scriptures as straightforward expressions of humanity’s divine nature and potential. Many other Christians read the same passages far more metaphorically because they experience the Bible through the lens of doctrinal interpretations that developed over time after the period described in the New Testament.
How have ideas about divinity shifted over Christian history?
Latter-day Saint beliefs would have sounded more familiar to the earliest generations of Christians than they do to many modern Christians. Many church fathers (influential theologians and teachers in early Christianity) spoke approvingly of the idea that humans can become divine. One modern scholar refers to the “ubiquity of the doctrine of deification”—the teaching that humans could become God—in the first centuries after Christ’s death.11 The church father Irenaeus, who died about A.D. 202, asserted that Jesus Christ “did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be what He is Himself.”12 Clement of Alexandria (ca. A.D. 150–215) wrote that “the Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God.”13 Basil the Great (A.D. 330–379) also celebrated this prospect—not just “being made like to God,” but “highest of all, the being made God.”14Is this the goal of Christianity? To be made God?
Much love!
Ok. So then your copy/paste about the nature of man are not relevant to Christ or a person's relaitionship with Him.
Moving on.
So then you acknowledge that a Mormon can be a Christian?
Again: I'm talking about whether or not a person is a Christian (the OP of this thread), not whether their church gets everything right. For example, I know many wonderful Protestant Christians whom are great people and have amazing relationships with Christ. The fact that I find parts of Protestantism to be contrary to the Bible isn't relevant.
The Book of Hebrews is what I would call the closing statement if Jesus were taken to trial, Jesus is greater than angels, the law, the prophets, Abraham & Moses, and anything the anti-christs are trying to teach.
Who you believe Jesus is the the most important question you will ever have to answer.
Who you believe Jesus is the the most important question you will ever have to answer.
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure what your objection is here.
Is the information I'm posting correct or incorrect? You don't seem to want to say. Is there a reason for that?
Much love!
If you were to turn that question around, and ask the LDS, "Is God's spirit-nature the same as man's spirit-nature", as I understand their doctrine, the answer would be "yes", they are the same.
@Jane_Doe22 's objection seems to be to promote God the Father's quality of existence over His nature of existence, seemingly to hide the lack of distinction about "what we are", as comparing God the Father to man. We are all the same kind of being, according to LDS teaching. "God was as man is, and God is as man may become", is how I've heard this put over the years. As I've been reviewing their teaching, that seems to be in fact what they teach.
Much love!
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
That’s one thing that troubles me so much; the dehumanization of ‘the other’, that group of nonhumans who hold doctrines contrary to mine. All curses and hatred for thee, your stubborn refusal to see things my way will be why you burn for eternity - and justifiably so!
I got to bludgeon you unmercifully - with unending gotcha ‘questions’ - lest your doctrines corrupt other poor wretches who fall for your <INSERT INSULT HERE> cult. And the cherry on top … much love!
(I know these aren’t the exact words but they seem to be the sentiment). Most disturbing to me is the devotion to ‘the others’ undoing, post after relentless post. (I tend not to frequent threads I don’t agree with. I don’t make it my life’s mission to spread such ‘love.’)
Marks: you stated in post 247 that God's nature was not dependent on man's nature. So if we're talking about the nature of God, then man simply is not relevant to the conversation and we can skip talking about the irrelevant subject (man).
Any yet here (#256), you are literally defining God based off a man, seemingly in reverse of 247. Yes, if your theology requires God to not have man be like Him, then the definition of "God" is dependent on "man's" definition. So... ?
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I'm not really sure what you are endeavoring to express at this point. It seems to me you've gone into some major obfuscation because of what I've been posting.
You've yet to either affirm or deny the quotes I've presented, only to seemingly attempt to impugn my reasons for posting them. This leads me to think that they are correctly presenting LDS teaching, only, it's not something you want looked at here on this thread, as people are asking if LDS is Christian.
Much love!
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