Bytor,
Your post 5 in this tread....
The Godhead is.......God the Father......Jesus Christ his only begotten and the Holy Ghost...and they are One God. One in prupose.....not substance. There purpose? "To bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."
Note you used "one in purpose". (Many LDS use that phrase) In my mind mobs are one in purpose, I just think there must be a better way of describing the unity of God than "purpose" (which the persons do share), they have far more unity than a mere commanility of purpose. To be eternal God, which (as far as I can tell) LDS affirm of all 3 persons, surely means they all share whatever it is that makes something an "eternal God". Are you purposing that all that is needed to acheive "eternal divinity" is to be one in purpose. I perceive in scripture a shared level of love, holiness, communion and purposes. However purposes is only one element of their unity, not the pinnacle or sum.
As for the substance, I think it needs refining. If you mean "substance" as the average person would understand it. Then it merely means that the things share the basic make up. I could say two bars of soap are of the same substance. Ice and water are of the same substance. In that sense the Father and Son are surely the same substance. Infact IMHO what really delineates LDS from other Christians is that you veiw us humans as being the same substance as God as well.
When Christians affirmed that the Son in His humanity is of one substance with us, it was surely meant that His incarnate being shared with us all the properites that make us human.
What precisely do you mean by "substance"? What stops you from saying the Father and Son are of the same substance?
(Please remember that it was decided very early on by the trinitarians that the Father was not crucified with the Son. The Son alone was incarnate, He alone was crucified and resurrected.)
Maureen,
In theory (at least some) LDS do from what I can understand believe that Jesus was eternal God. (The beggining of the BOM affirms this) Since time as we know it began at creation, there was no time as we know it before creation. Therefore unlike historical Arian's they would not believe that there was "a time when the Son was not".
The orthodox creeds hold that the Son was begotten before time or the beginning of the universe. What does it mean for God to beget God? This comes back to the LDS having a very different veiw of God the Father then what traditional Christians do. We don't create children, we beget them. If God is like us, then in LDS veiws he would act like us. We view God as of different substance to us and therefore do not see it as meaning something like the LDS.
They whole thing is at the extremes of our mental abilities, how does the Father beget the Son outside of time? Does God have his own time continuum outside of our time dimension? I presume you probably percieve that before time was a single time point, LDS have a more creative solution.
Looking at the Bible, we are left with the bearest sketches of this stuff, God clearly did not beleive we really needed to understand this stuff and left it as a mystery. The LDS believe that God turned up again and gave further information.
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