From: exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Mormons, a different Jesus
Date: 16 Oct 92 19:24:47 GMT
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Inc.
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In article <1992Oct15.183109.13522@newsgate.sps.mot.com> ACUS10@WACCVM.SPS.MOT.COM (Mark Fuller) writes:
>From: ACUS10@WACCVM.SPS.MOT.COM (Mark Fuller)
>Subject: Re: Mormons, a different Jesus
>Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 18:22:05 GMT

>From: tensmekl@infonode.ingr.com (Kermit Tensmeyer)
>>>I have not been following the other thread because I do not beleive
>>>the issue concerns the relative dirtyness of sex.  The issue is
>>>that the Bible does not teach the LDS position: that God had sex
>>>with Mary.
>..
>>
>>Some Lds Believe and Some don't.  I guess that's why I might
>>refer to it as speculation.

>Fair enough.  I would just point out that the 'Some LDS' who have/do
>beleive it were of the 'doctrine expounding' types.

>>I was refering to your disclaimer that LDS speclation in God having
>>Sex With Mary implied that Jesus was Born in Sin. You said it
>>I didn't    You have been invited to back up your belief in this
>>heresy with scripture. you haven't

>I think you have me confused with someone else, (which seems to be
>happening alot lately).  I have not studied the issue of whether
>sexless birth=sinless.  I would say God is all powerful and could
>utilize any means he saw fit to bring himself into the world.

>My point is: God is not an exalted man, with a body of flesh and
>bones, living in heaven with his polygamous family, sitting on
>a throne with an errect penis (as pictured in LDS scripture).
>The Bible presents the virgin birth as just that, and says the
>Holy Spirit was the deliverer of the miracle.  It was not
>a mad roll in the hay with the LDS exalted man god.

>Mark
><standard disclaimer>

I have always thought this Mormon doctrine was weird, but it seems to me
that orthodox christians may not be in a dialectical position to criticize
the LDS idea that God is a divine man, for Christ himself [all 
medieval christological controversy aside] is supposed to be decidedly both 
a man and god? Yet I seem to recall there being passages in the Bible 
where in Jesus himself says things such as "If any man has seen me he has 
seen the father", and about Christ "being in the express image of his [i.
e. God's] person", and host of other such statements occur regularly. 
Interpreted literally--and I suppose here we come close to the heart of the 
whole dialectical problem between not only orthodox christians and other 
heretical groups within the christian camp but with the LDS as well--
statements like this seem to imply that the father of the man Jesus of 
Nazareth was a god-man himself! 

So, verbally at least I should say that the lds doctrine is closer to the
bible than contemporary christianity. It would be interesting to know what
biblicists would say about this, since I understand the tendency in modern
biblical scholarship and biblical theology is to stay as close as possible
to the actual text of the bible, making interpretive moves for theological 
purposes only when there appears to be no alternative.

Was it not Athanasius who remarked: God become man so that man may become
God? Or was it Anselm? [If anyone's interested I'll see if I can find the
reference at home.] 

Personally, the idea of God being a man seems strange in the extreme, but 
then, the whole supernaturalist thought-world of the hebrew bible seems 
strange to me, as does the whole western theological tradition, combining as 
it does an essentially hebraic conception of a dynamic personal deity in 
terms of the ideas, assumptions, and arguments developed in ancient Greek 
metaphysics.  This marriage, as many have observed, was bound to end in
divorce.
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Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc