From: slhw4@cc.usu.edu (Jason Hunsaker)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Mormonism
Date: 29 Dec 92 20:30:48 MDT
Organization: Utah State University

In article <C007np.45B@acsu.buffalo.edu>,
 psyrobtw@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Robert Weiss) writes:
> slhw4@cc.usu.edu (Jason Hunsaker) writes...
>> bobweiss@acsu.buffalo.edu (Robert Weiss) writes:
>>> rob@excalibur.gatech.edu (Rob Lester) writes:

>>>> Actually LDS doctrine agrees with what you attribute to
>>>> Christendom. We believe that Christ was the Creator (as well as a
>>>> spirit brother of Lucifer, as were we all to be complete. If you
>>>> study the LDS doctrine on the pre-existence this becomes much
>>>> clearer.)  
>>> 
>>> Not really. `Creator of all things' includes *time*.
>>> The LDS Jesus didn't create time.
>> 
>> Actually, I don't think this can be shown one way or the other
>> from LDS canon.  I recall a scripture in Alma somewhere (I don't
>> have my sticks handy) that says something to the effect of "time
>> is measured only unto man".
> 
> The proof that I would offer would consist of Joseph Fielding 
> Smith writing that Joseph Smith taught that "our Father had a
> Father and so on."  Kimball asserts that "we shall go back to our
> Father and God who is connected with one who is still farther
> back; and this Father is connected with one still farther back,
> and so on..."  McConkie wrote that "the elements from which the
> creation took place are eternal and therefore had no beginning."

We are still not talking on the same level.  I am arguing that
our present concept of time, right at this instant, as we
comprehend it, may be totally irrelevant and unapplicable to the
realm in which God exists.  If "time is measured only unto
[mortal] man" then any discusions about it beyond that limited
scope seems useless and unimportant.

At any rate, LDS canon doesn't seem to treat the subject of
whether time was or was not created or whether it can or can't be
created.

The only releveant passages I can find are:
"... all is as one day with God, and time only is measured unto men."
(BoM: Alma 40:8)                                              

"But only an account of *this* earth, and the inhabitants
thereof, give I [the Lord] unto you [Moses]. ...." 
(PoGP: Moses 1:35, emphais mine -JBH)

"Kolob ... is *near* unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set
this one [Kolob] to govern all those which belong to the *same*
*order* as that upon which thou [Abraham] standest [ie: the Earth].

"...  Kolob [is] after the manner of the Lord according to its
times and seasons in the revolutions thereof; that one revolution
was a day unto the Lord, after his manner of reckoning, it being
one thousand years according to the time appointed unto [the
Earth].  This is the reckoning of the Lord's time *according* to
the reckoning of Kolob."
(PoGP: Abraham 3:3,4, emphasis mine -JBH)

"And thus we see that, that there was a time granted unto man to
repent, yea, a probationary time, a time to repent and serve God."
(BoM: Alma 42:4)

"Man was also in the beginning with God.  Intelligence, or the
light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.

"All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed
it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there
is no existence.

"For man is spirit.  The elements are eternal, and spirit and
element, inseparably connected, receive a fullness of joy;"
(Doctrine and Covenants 93:29,30,33)

> The LDS universe is a beginningless universe.  Time always 
> existed, but there was never a beginning.  Time, in fact, 
> existed before "our Father" did.

Perhaps.

[...]
>> Mormons do not believe in creation ex nihilio.  Neither do many
>> other religions -- most notably Judaism.
> 
> Which Jewish tradition are you taking about? At the synagogue
> that I attended, it is held that God spoke the universe into 
> existence.

Oops.  I knew I shouldn't have said it that way.  I was a little
too bold in my assumptions and assertions.  Permit me to
rephrase.  My understanding of the Hebrew in Genesis is that the
word translated in English as `created' is not generally used to
mean creation ex nihilio.

Pardon me for imposing my interpretation on a group of others
without their consent.

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Jason Hunsaker  -|-  Logan, Utah  -|-  Internet: slhw4@cc.usu.edu
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,alt.pagan