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Just because God lovesyou unconditionally does not mean he will or should rewardyou unconditionally. If a parent loved his two children the same but one of those children frequently disobeyed him, that parent would not give both children the same reward, for that would be unfair.
There is no conflict between God’s unconditional love for us and his requiring us to do certain things to return to live with him. No conflict whatsoever.
I think the answer is simple: The fact that Jesus was married was removed from New Testament manuscripts because it was deemed too hard to explain and even unorthodox by that time. This censorship must have occurred after the apostles died and before the third or fourth century. Furthermore, several gnostic Christian texts mention that Jesus was married. The gnostics were copiers. They took orthodox Christian doctrines and gave new twists to them.
When I joined the Church in Oregon in 1977, I was taught that Jesus was married–not as part of the missionary lessons but in conversations with other members. It’s interesting to see that an increasing number of non-Mormon scholars are concluding that Jesus was married.
Speaking of faith and works, we have this fascinating statement by none other than Augustine of Hippo: Quote:We can see, then, why St. Peter in his second epistle urges the faithful to live good and holy lives. . . . He was aware of the fact that certain unrighteous men had interpreted certain rather obscure passages of St. Paul to mean that they did not have to lead a good life, since they were assured of salvation as long as they had the faith. He warns them that, although there are certain passages in the epistles of St. Paul which are hard to understand—which passages some have misinterpreted, as they have other passages of Sacred Scripture, but to their own ruin—nevertheless, St. Paul has the same mind on the question of eternal salvation as have all the other apostles, namely, that eternal salvation will not be given except to those who lead a good life. (
De Fide et Operibus, 14.21, in Gregory Lombardo, translator, St. Augustine on Faith and Works,Westminster: The Newman Press, 1988, p. 29) He also said this:
Quote:Let us now consider the question of faith. In the first place, we feel that we should advise the faithful that they would endanger the salvation of their souls if they acted on the false assurance that faith alone is sufficient for salvation or that they need not perform good works in order to be saved. (Ibid., p. 28)
You can fill dozens of pages with quotes from the early Christian fathers expressing the necessity of performing good works for salvation.
I find all the prophets inspiring, from Joseph Smith to President Monson today. When you look at their teachings through the eyes of the Spirit, there really are no contradictions in any essential teaching. There is line upon line, precept upon precept, and some adaptation to the conditions of our day vs. the conditions of previous days. The core truths are the same.
I would say that at its core the restored gospel is these four things: * The restoration of the priesthood, which enables the performance of crucial ordinances such as baptism, confirmation, and temple ordinances, etc.
* The restoration of prophets and apostles.
* The bringing forth of additional scripture.
* The restoration of correct doctrine, such as the correct understanding of the nature of God and the way to salvation.
DarkJedi wrote:mikegriffith1 wrote:I think part of this is semantics. But, I can logically understand that a person’s actions can affect how much they are loved. Certainly any parent knows that some children are move lovable than others.
As for our end of the bargain, the scriptures seem pretty clear:
“If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).
“He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4).
“They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good” (Titus 1:16).
“No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him” (1 John 3:6).
“If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth” (1 John 1:6).
“And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:9).
“God, who will render to each one according to his deeds: eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath” (Romans 2:6-
.“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21).
And we all know you can prove almost anything you like using scripture. I don’t spout scripture at others, especially here, but there are also many scriptures that say all we have to do is believe.Actually, there are only a handful of scriptures that say all we have to do is believe. Furthermore, if you read ancient Christian statements on what it meant to “believe,” you will find that they did not mean that the simple act of accepting something as true was all that belief entailed. They meant it in the sense that a coach would tell a player “you gotta want it.” Now, of course, the coach doesn’t mean the player will improve if he merely “wants” to be a good player. No, he’s saying that being a better player requires sustained effort and action. This is the same sense that the ancient Christians understood the word “believe” as it related to salvation.
I think part of this is semantics. But, I can logically understand that a person’s actions can affect how much they are loved. Certainly any parent knows that some children are move lovable than others. As for our end of the bargain, the scriptures seem pretty clear:
“If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).
“He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4).
“They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good” (Titus 1:16).
“No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him” (1 John 3:6).
“If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth” (1 John 1:6).
“And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:9).
“God, who will render to each one according to his deeds: eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath” (Romans 2:6-
.“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21).
I’ve had some interesting discussions with evangelical friends about scriptural inerrancy. If you read evangelical defenses of inerrancy with any care, you’ll see that they only claim inerrancy for the original autographs, the very first versions, and that they allow that errors were introduced in later manuscripts. They must take this position because there are certain errors in the Bible that are too obvious to deny, and some of them involve verses that discuss substantive doctrinal issues. We Latter-day Saints understand that even the original texts can have errors, since God does not care about the occasional misspelled word, perfect grammar, etc. He understands that as we seek to express revelation that we have received, we may not always do so in perfect English. Mormon took care to warn readers that the book’s imperfections were the fault of men, not God.
Roy wrote:mikegriffith1 wrote:Apparently the rite of initiation was a combination of the ordinance of baptism and the endowment ceremony. Initially, from what we find in scripture and in early Christian texts, baptism was a single, simple rite that was performed in public. But, in later centuries baptism was combined with another rite (the endowment) and because a private initiation rite.
Striking similarities. Would you suppose that these early christians received these “initiation ceremonies” through revelation as part of an eternal gospel or that they were guilty of adding pomp and circumstance to the simple and pure rite of baptism?
Either is possible depending upon your perspective.
Possible, but extremely unlikely, to the point of being impossible for all intents and purposes. The odds are fantastically remote that Joseph Smith et al would invent a ceremony that by sheer chance contained numerous specific parallels with ancient Christian initiation rites that were merely manmade expansions on the rite of baptism.
Some fascinating discoveries relating to the temple endowment were made in the 1970s and documented in Dr. Roger J. Adams’ study “The Iconography of Early Christian Initiation.” Scholars found ancient murals that depicted scenes from early Christian initiation ceremonies. Some of them included the following elements: * People dressed in sacred clothing, including hats and robes.
* People dressed in sacred clothing approaching a veil with a hand extended from the veil.
* Symbols on the sacred clothing.
* People raising their right arms to the square.
* Background scenes showing Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.
* People being anointed.
DarkJedi wrote:mikegriffith1 wrote:DarkJedi wrote:I have given the idea that the LDS church is patterned after the church Jesus organized much thought over many years. Honestly, I don’t see that Jesus actually organized a church or that organizing a church – or starting a new religion – was even his aim. The only reference of any church service I see in the Bible is Jesus attending synagogue, and Jesus and his disciples apparently also followed Jewish traditions and kept Jewish holidays and rites. Other than the son of God part, Jesus generally taught Jewish doctrine, and I do note that Jesus didn’t actually say much (that we have recorded anyway) about himself being the son of God – it was mostly said by others. It is clear he did have apostles and that they did have a role in helping him do his work and they may have organized a church, but did Jesus actually do so? Are we teaching something that isn’t correct? Please understand I am not accusing the church of lying, if anything it’s another one of those things that just gets repeated and is eventually accepted as true.
I think the New Testament alone makes it crystal clear that Jesus organized a church. He called twelve apostles. He called “seventy” other special disciples. After the resurrection, he appeared to the apostles and directed them to go forth and baptize converts. He appeared to Paul. He appeared to Peter. He directed the apostles to begin baptizing gentiles into the church. He gave the apostles directions on the roles of bishops and elders.
In fact Jesus himself mentioned his church in Matthew 16: “and upon this rock I will build MY CHURCH and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
I’m not sure you read the whole thread here, but yes, I agree there was an organization and perhaps a bigger better organization after the death of Jesus. Those two organizations do not appear to match precisely. Did Jesus’ church have deacons, teachers, and priests in the same way we know them, if at all? There are several differences between the three (his organization, the apostles’ organization, and the modern organization). All I’m saying here is maybe we shouldn’t go around teaching people our church was based on his when that’s not clearly the case.
If you consider the entire body of early Christian evidence, and not just the New Testament, then the resemblance between the restored church and the ancient church is remarkable. The NT does not give us every detail about church organization, nor was it ever intended to do so–not to mention the fact that we know for an absolute fact that our current NT contains fewer books than the ancient one did. But we also have the writings of bishops and elders who wrote between around AD 90 until the apostasy was in full flower–and if we use the additional information about the church found in those sources, the LDS Church emerges as the closest parallel to the ancient church.
Just one example: There are a few early Christian references to “high priests,” although nothing is said about their role. We also have plenty of references to “teachers” in early Christian sources. We have ample information from ante-Nicene sources that early Christian bishops were not paid, and that when the idea of a paid clergy was introduced, old-time bishops found it somewhat shocking. We have records about early Christian bishops being “sustained” by a vote of their congregation. Etc., etc., etc.
Now, naturally, the Lord can alter the roles and qualifications for offices in his church as the church expands and as conditions change. The early church was a fraction of the size of the restored church. Whereas the early church had one group of “seventy,” the restored church now has eight. In the ancient church, deacons were men, whereas early in the restoration the Lord altered the age requirement for that office.
DarkJedi wrote:I have given the idea that the LDS church is patterned after the church Jesus organized much thought over many years. Honestly, I don’t see that Jesus actually organized a church or that organizing a church – or starting a new religion – was even his aim. The only reference of any church service I see in the Bible is Jesus attending synagogue, and Jesus and his disciples apparently also followed Jewish traditions and kept Jewish holidays and rites. Other than the son of God part, Jesus generally taught Jewish doctrine, and I do note that Jesus didn’t actually say much (that we have recorded anyway) about himself being the son of God – it was mostly said by others. It is clear he did have apostles and that they did have a role in helping him do his work and they may have organized a church, but did Jesus actually do so? Are we teaching something that isn’t correct? Please understand I am not accusing the church of lying, if anything it’s another one of those things that just gets repeated and is eventually accepted as true.
I think the New Testament alone makes it crystal clear that Jesus organized a church. He called twelve apostles. He called “seventy” other special disciples. After the resurrection, he appeared to the apostles and directed them to go forth and baptize converts. He appeared to Paul. He appeared to Peter. He directed the apostles to begin baptizing gentiles into the church. He gave the apostles directions on the roles of bishops and elders.
In fact Jesus himself mentioned his church in Matthew 16: “and upon this rock I will build MY CHURCH and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (16:18).
Pretty much the only way to credibly deny that Jesus organized a church is to assume that the New Testament record is markedly inaccurate. If the New Testament is accurate–not inerrant, but essentially accurate–then one cannot avoid the conclusion that Jesus established a church and then guided that church for decades after the resurrection.
I don’t see a contradiction between the Church exerting effort to help Proposition 8 and the Church saying that changes in civil law can’t change our understanding and practice of marriage in the Church. We would prefer that civil law remain in harmony with correct principles–hence the effort to help pass Prop 8. But, if civil law does change, that does not change the truth that true marriage is between a man and a woman. One thing I find fascinating about the LDS endowment ceremony is that it resembles the ancient Christian rite of initiation. We know from various early Christian sources that the ceremony included being anointed on parts of your body and raising your arm to the square, and that it was reserved for members who were deemed ready and worthy to receive it because it conveyed knowledge that was not shared with the general public. Apparently the rite of initiation was a combination of the ordinance of baptism and the endowment ceremony. Initially, from what we find in scripture and in early Christian texts, baptism was a single, simple rite that was performed in public. But, in later centuries baptism was combined with another rite (the endowment) and because a private initiation rite.
Catholic scholar Marcus von Wellnitz recognized the parallels between early Christian initiation rites and the Mormon temple, and wrote an article about it that was published in
BYU Studies.
