Jacob J and I have been l somewhat half-heartedly putting together this post for over a month now. Seeing J. Stapley’s excellent post over at BCC, I thought I’d dust it off a bit and post it. The scope of this post is not to put forth any foundational doctrine or all encompassing concept of theology, but it is merely our hope to establish a few concepts regarding Joseph’s beliefs regarding spirits, and specifically his understanding that pre-mortal human spirits were in human form, which some would term a spirit body. We readily acknowledge that Joseph’s thoughts on this matter are disputed and the sources we have are ambiguous enough to support multiple readings.

With that in mind, it seems prudent to survey as many quotes as possible and look for points on which they seem to converge. While one, two, or even three quotes may be disputed, we believe the combined evidence of these statements puts forward a strong case for what Joseph may have believed on the subject. We provide or reference all the statements and sermons we think are pertinent to the subject below. Please feel free to add to these in the comments, if you know of any statements on the subject (for or against) that we may have missed. (more…)

That Elder Holland had taught that Heavenly Father had hidden in the dark corners of the Universe while Jesus was crucified:

 

With all the conviction of my soul I testify that He did please His Father perfectly and that a perfect Father did not forsake His Son in that hour. Indeed, it is my personal belief that in all of Christ’s mortal ministry the Father may never have been closer to His Son than in these agonizing final moments of suffering. Nevertheless, that the supreme sacrifice of His Son might be as complete as it was voluntary and solitary, the Father briefly withdrew from Jesus the comfort of His Spirit, the support of His personal presence. It was required; indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind—us, all of us—would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.

Yeah, it was 10 years ago, but neener neener neener.

On a more serious note, Elder Holland points to the “aloneness” of Christ as a central component of the atonement, so that he could learn what he needed to know to help us when we are seperated from God by sin, and thus also spiritually alone. 

I can say I felt the spirit very strongly while Elder Holland spoke, but am still thinking through what if any theological implications this may have on the compassionate royal infussion exemplar judge theory of the atonement.  lately, I have sort of been drawn toward this crucifixion being a single instant in an infinite process of atonement where Jesus and Heavenly Father are continually suffering us.  But this aloneness would not be an infinite and eternal aloneness, so there seem to be definite aspects of the atonement which, atleast in terms of time, have a definite beginning and end. 

Thoughts?

 

Updated:

In 1980, Elder Holland quoted Melvin J. Ballard (see comment #1 below for the quote) here.

 

Is this a change in doctrine for the church? (doctrine with a lower case d, that is)

In any case, sorry for the neeners, you were right, but things have changed…

Are there things which you believe which sound crazy even to you, and yet you continue to believe them. Are there things that you believe that you’d never share with someone else because you think they’d think you are crazy?

Here are some crazy things I believe:

1. I believe that Jesus’ suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane may be connected to his taking omniscience upon himself, and thus feeling what Heavenly Father always feels.
2. I believe that some day the temple ceremony is going to change and be very different than what it is like today, including allowing entrance to non-members for their children’s sealings.
3. I believe that the future doesn’t exist, but God knows it anyway.
4. I believe in determinism and free-will being compatible (only sometimes, usually on tuesdays)
5. I believe there are as many degrees of glory as individual people, and the 3 degrees are mainly symbolic/generic in nature
6. I believe that we suffered pre-mortally due to deficiencies that required this life
7. I believe God doesn’t interact with us more directly because it would damage us if he did
8. I believe polygamy will not be practiced eternally, and may have been merely a form of theolgocial collateral damage in order to bring about sealings as they are practiced now
9. I believe that sealings are mainly about human interdependence
10. I believe what many think of as romantic Love is just a chemical reaction 
11. I believe most of the time God is limited to what’s available at the time in terms of calling people, etc.
12. I believe the Prophet does have a batphone to God, or atleast a spider-sense to Him or something. He definitely has something I don’t have, or is better at using it, at any rate.
13. I believe that things that we do that are not for either survival or procreation (like art) are probably the closest we can get to seeing our true eternal selves. 
14. I believe in evolution and I believe there is absolutely nothing heretical about that
15. I believe Padre Pio wasn’t lying about the stigmata
16. I sometimes believe the Holy Ghost may be a calling and not an individual (like Elias)
17. I believe animals have free-will, but there is some fundamental difference between them and human spirits, like we talk about with Gender sometimes.
18. I believe more orange juice helps everything

So last night, I suddenly became distracted by a new theological puzzle. I wondered to myself, Could Jesus Fail?

By this I mean, could Jesus have not lived a perfect life and brought forth the atonement?

If he couldn’t fail, then is Jesus different than us, and our trying to be like Jesus is merely vanity, something we cannot accomplish? If he can’t fail and we are utter failures, how do we take being called to be perfect even as the father in heaven is perfect?

On the other hand, If he could fail, then why didn’t he? Are there other Jesus’ out there in our history who didn’t make it? Could I live a perfect life without Jesus’ help? If so, why don’t I?

I can’t even articulate how confused this is making me, or the scope of the conundrum. But I did want to throw something out here for discussions.

I am posting up a few interesting rumors I have heard in the last 24 hours which pertain to the church.

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Currently, I believe we can lump the challenges our faith faces to it’s modern acceptance as a legitimate faith choice by outsiders into the following categories: Issues regarding Race, Issues regarding Traditional Family Values, and issues regarding Christian doctrine.

Below I will enumerate these issues and discuss them. 

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So ten years ago, when I joined the church, it suddenly became slightly uncomfortable to me that despite having 11 years of catholic school education, I had never read the Old Testament. So I randomly picked a book of the OT to read, as a way of getting started. It was Nehemiah. As you can imagine, that didn’t go over too well. So I then began reading one chapter of each of the Standard works every day. That lasted for about 20 days, and then I lost my Bible in a car accident.  (I bought a new bible, but alas the habit was broken).  So another 9 months passed, I read the D&C and PoGP for the first time, and went on a mission. (I read the Book of Mormon 2 or 3 more times too) and I started at the OT again. This time I made it to Chronicles, then gave up. When I got married, My wife admitted she also had never finished the OT, and we read together, and made it to Leviticus once, then the end of Genesis, then the middle of Exodus, etc. etc. Then we tried backwards and made it to Jeremiah. So last May I bought the Old Testament on CD. It’s the ‘Inspired By’ TNIV edition, with a dramatized rendition by an all African-American cast.  And last week I finished it.

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So I spoke in Church yesterday.

Here are some comments I got after my talk.

“Hillarious, as always!” – Teenager

“Do you do stand up, you should do stand up, your speech was just like a stand up routine.” – Sweet Old Widow

“Dude, you are a great public speaker” – Guy who dressed as a whoopy cushion for Halloween.

“Why didn’t you give the talk you wrote!?!” – Spouse

My talk was on the Book of Mormon being for our Day. I went a bit off of my topic, but I remember talking about:

• A brief comment that the children were not doing well with the switch to afternoon church, and missed their naps (as did their fathers) as an Ice breaker.
• The Old Testmant not being written for our day, and being worse than an R or X rated movie
• Jeffrey R. Holland’s Master Thesis on the over 3,000 textual changes in the different editions of the book of Mormon (including the change last year)
• The Expansion Theory of Book of Mormon translation, and Alexander Campbell’s “delusions”
• The Book of Mormon pointing to Modern Revelation, Jesus being the Christ, and Prophetic Authority
• The Book of Mormon being a guide that points us to the value of the Church and the need to participate in the church community
• A passionate argument my wife and I had while reading “3 Questions for a Frantic Family” where we decided that the core purpose of our family was “working together to be happy and become like God”, which I believe is also the purpose of our church family.

Not sure what was funny about any of that in hindsight.  Sometimes I worry about being funny.

…a Crematorium. 



 

 

I decided this a while back because one of my good friends passed away growing up and her funeral expenses nearly ruined her parents financially, coming in at over $10,000 dollars (which is fairly common for a coffin, phermaldahyde, etc burial). On the other hand Cremation costs around $600. I can’t stand the idea of leaving a financial burden like that to the kiddos, and I figure it is my way of repenting to mother nature, as I figure the land I would have been buried in is approximately equivilant to the amount of land I used in landfills by using disposable diapers. (6 ft deep, by 7 ft long,  by 4 ft wide, you do the math)

But I have heard that there are some LDS concerns about this. I mainly blew them off as outdated ideas with no place in the worldwide church, but then, upon the urging of some, I looked up one.

The latest I found was an opinion of a GA which noted that burial is preferable as it leaves the body to decay via natural means and scriptures site “You were made from Dust and to Dust you shall return”. First, I was raised Catholic and I am pretty well aware of the whole “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust” idea. Second, there is absolutely nothing natural about injecting preservatives into my body, locking it in an airtight metal box and burying it. Third, nothing says “Dust to Dust” more than being reduced to the same.

So I ask you, does anyone have any legitimate objections to cremation?

I am currently Young Men President in my Ward, and in order to give the Young Men ample opportunity to learn to teach by basically rotating the responsibility of who teaches each week from person to person. (We do combined Priests and Teachers, so there are 8 guys between 14 and 18) I’ve been doing this for about 6 months now, and teaching hasn’t really improved much.

We currently have 3 rules:

1. Don’t Suck
2. Don’t be Boring
3. When paraphrasing a scriptural story, don’t attribute the curse words to members of the Godhead (more…)

I bought it, and it’s a beautiful and very attractive book. I could go on about the soft veneer of the pages, the attractive binding, or the how beautiful the book is underneath the cover.

But, I probably won’t ever read it cover to cover.
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