Is Monotheism necessary?

karenstricycle
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Post by karenstricycle » Wed Oct 29, 2008 10:49 pm

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mikew
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Re: Is Monotheism necessary?

Post by mikew » Wed Oct 29, 2008 10:56 pm

karenstricycle wrote:mikew-
but since Jesus Christ is God (coming in the Flesh)
Jesus Christ may be JHVH born of Mary as a man-child, but JHVH is not God The Father.
When Jesus gets in here He clearifys this quite clearly. He is The Son of God.
Oh. well. it seems like you missed God's humor in Luke 18:19.

Okay I'll ask the question you are dying for me to ask...

What does "Son of God" imply in your mind?

Would you concur with the Jews that Jesus made Himself to be equal with God in saying this?

It still remains probable that Jesus would have given the ruler a simpler rebuke in Luke 18:19 where He could have said "don't call Me Good. Only God is Good." But God said it the way He wanted it to be recorded.
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karenstricycle
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Post by karenstricycle » Thu Oct 30, 2008 6:13 pm

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karenstricycle
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Post by karenstricycle » Thu Oct 30, 2008 6:56 pm

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mikew
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Re: Is Monotheism necessary?

Post by mikew » Fri Oct 31, 2008 12:03 am

karenstricycle wrote:
mikew- "But God said it that way He wanted it to be recorded."
I'm not sure where I might make a statement of how I view Scripture? Yes. I believe that God wanted this people of JHVH to make these kinds of records. They held this "burden" of record keeping quite sacred. We are so glad they did. They are great.
A. These sacred manuscripts are NOT "audio transcripts" however.
B. Scholars know these translated documents are not the actual originals of 70AD.
C. These manuscripts are missing many self-refered to "books". Many writings were lost.
D. These manuscripts have passed many hands prior to the ones in storage we have now.
I love these Scriptures. Even the way they are. Just pick a translation and stick with it I guess. There are so many translations lately I've noticed. Be careful not to do too much twisting and bending of the english , because use of multiple translations, is going to be hard enough as it is.
Ah. So you have a rather diminished view of scriptures, God and His ability. I guess this would have to be expected. You figure it was based on the ability of people to write and maintain the records rather than God's sovereignty and ability to preserve these in the manner He intended.

Point A -- I'm not sure what the significance of the phrase "audio transcripts" is
Point B -- This statement says nothing useful. Maybe you are making a contrast somewhere
Point C -- So is there some religious group that you are saying holds onto books whether or not inspired of God? The books rejected from the canon of scripture have in all appearance been excluded with good nearly self-evident cause. Some groups also include the Bible as one among other accepted books even with these supposed flaws.
Point D -- As I see this point I wonder what you mean by "we" -- is that your group or do you mean the Bible? If you mean the Bible, it matters not what is in storage. The evidence always seems to confirm the accuracy of scripture and the abundance of discoveries just has helped to get closer to the original texts.

Now you lament the translations. Again you diminish the Bible and the power of the Word of God.

Is this the image of LDS that we are reasonably expect? Did your idea of god mess up so much that he had to develop a new plan to make it all work again?

Sorry if I'm a little reactive. I just was responding to the impressions of what I just saw. Maybe it is time to see scripture for the power and love that only is possible by God. "We beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father."
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darinhouston
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Re: Is Monotheism necessary?

Post by darinhouston » Fri Oct 31, 2008 10:26 am

I didn't hear Karen say anything to indicate a "diminished" view of "Scripture," just a recognition that they are real documents created by and through and passing through real human hands throughout history in various tongues and cultures, and modern translations need to be approached with a respect for that issue. You don't have to look far to see real differences between translations (and textual variants between ancient manuscripts). God has Sovereignly preserved what He wishes to be preserved in the exact way He "wants" or "needs" it to be preserved for His Truth to be maintained, but you don't have to look far to see that God didn't preserve everything the same in every translation, so He clearly either doesn't micromanage the preservation of these texts or some of the popular and respected translations of today are not being preserved by God like the others are.

Karen, I am still interested to hear more of what you think of Jesus. I hear you saying that He wasn't "the Father." Clearly, we also see a distinction between Jesus the Man and the Father, but we also believe both are in a sense one and together with the Holy Spirit are the One True God. We don't see Jesus' statements about being subject to the Father as qualitatively identifying a "hierarchy" of divinity or distinguishing Jesus from also being "God," but just to identify a relationship within the godhead that respects a hierarchy of function (like arms and heads).

I believe part of the difficulty is that LDS (as I understand it) believe the Father is a personage like Jesus (and us) and that they must be completely separate beings, so they both can't be "God". Do you share this view?

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darinhouston
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Re: Is Monotheism necessary?

Post by darinhouston » Fri Oct 31, 2008 4:08 pm

Just to comment further on my previous post, I think this issue is very important to the present discussion. I think it's important for us to appreciate that one of our chief objections to LDS teachings is that we disagree on the truth and inspiration of their own texts or their prophets. So, we need to be careful that we don't just say "ours are inspired because God wrote them" since they believe the same thing. We need at least as good of a reason to believe in the inspiration of our sacred texts as we expect of LDS with respect to their own, I think.

I may not state this elegantly (and there's another thread here from the old board somewhere), but the main reason I, personally, have confidence in our Scriptures is because I believe in their historicity and their internal consistency, etc, and not because they're a "magic book" sort of thing. God may well have soverignly intended for even the textual variants to exist, but that's unknowable to us. What we can know is that the existence of Jesus is historically reliable, and the sayings attributed to Him which confirmed the OT Scriptures were transferred to us not by magic carpet or magic lamp, but through real people fixed in time and place with reliable testimony and confirmation through even secular and other sources. The canonicity of present NT is complex, but testified to by their internal consistency, the nature of the things they contain (such as statements against interest), the belief by those close to the writers in the first century that they were in fact authentic and considered scripture, and the like.

As to translations, I have some significant reservations. Politics (consider NIV), lost ancient contextual knowledge, and evolving modern cultural contexts (consider Living Bible) or doctrinal bents (consider Scoffield), or even knowledge of terms of original languages found in too few ancient texts to be certain make for a challenging reliance on the technical grammar and word/phraseology choice. This is why the whole counsel of Scripture is so much more important to me than diagramming an English proof-text sentence.

Try this out -- I deal regularly (and with exceeding frustration) with English translations of foreign technical documents. If you know two people who are native speakers in a particular non-English language, try writing something with "deep" and "subtle" or "technical" thoughts -- and have one of them translate it into their native tongue and the other to translate out of their native tongue and just see how it reads. I believe God will preserve His fundamental teachings about who He is, what He has done, who Christ is and what He has done, and what is expected of us in sufficent detail that we are able to find and follow Him. Beyond that, I'm not sure He doesn't let us "screw it up" a bit. Otherwise, there would have been some pretty interesting stories of supernatural preventative measures with pens and quills or ink disappearing or people losing limbs as they tried to mis-scribe texts, etc. Forgive me, but for some reason, when I hear people speak of the supernatural identification and preservation of the present canon, I can't help but think of Harry Potter and a magic quill or something (which I guess is one of my fundamental issues with the claims as to Smith and the creation of the LDS sacred texts).

karenstricycle
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Post by karenstricycle » Sat Nov 01, 2008 6:12 pm

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darinhouston
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Re: Is Monotheism necessary?

Post by darinhouston » Sat Nov 01, 2008 9:02 pm

karenstricycle wrote:As for outside writings? Every group seems to have extensive outside writings. Yes?
None that we would consider authoritative or inerrant. We have some that would confirm our understanding of culture or historical claims in the New Testament or attest to their authenticity, but I'm unaware of any "outside texts" that Protestants would consider equal to or adding to Scripture.

We particularly would discount any "outside texts" that would either be inconsistent with Scripture or proven false by established secular history.

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Paidion
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Re: Is Monotheism necessary?

Post by Paidion » Sat Nov 01, 2008 10:16 pm

I'm unaware of any "outside texts" that Protestants would consider equal to or adding to Scripture.
... adding to which scripture? Which bible? Which canon? The 1611 King James Bible perhaps?
It contained the Apocrypha. Do you accept the apocryphal writings as Scripture?

Irenaeus (130 A.D.) did not include Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation in his list.

Maybe you accept Athanasius' list (296 A.D.), identical to the list in your modern New Testament, a list which he called "wells of salvation" and instructed the churches to bring in any writings in his list which they did not have, and take out any writings which were not included. Ah, maybe God inspired Athanasius to choose the true "canon". Yet, interestingly enough, Athanasius included Baruch in his Old Testament list. Should it be included as Scripture, or did Athanasius blow it? If so, then did God really inspire him to choose the correct writings to include?

But it seems Athanasius didn't settle even the New Testament. Codex Claromontanus (400 A.D.) included the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Letter of Barnabus.

We can't conclude that the list which God allowed to remain in our day is the complete "Word of God", the only writings which are "Scripture", flawless, without error. For He also allowed the Catholic list to endure which includes the Apocrypha, (of the "Deutrocanonicals" as Catholics call them).

So how do we know our Bible contains the correct list of "Scriptural books"? Upon what basis have we accepted this list?
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