“How do we know the Father and the Son for ourselves? By personal revelation.” Elder Hale.

Could it be that the purpose of the Church is not to tell us everything there is to know about God, but to show us where and how to go about discovering additional truths? A creed does exactly as Joseph Smith said, it defines the limit to belief. Think about what the Church holds as doctrine concerning the nature and form of God. Compared to other Christian denominations I don’t feel the LDS have an overwhelming addition to the body of knowledge. What has been revealed about God is miniscule compared to what we have yet to learn. Perhaps this additional knowledge is to be gained individually through the pursuit of a personal relationship with our Father in Heaven.

I’ve wondered about that. Hoped to find a response in the thread rather than the bickering.

Given our original topic, if one can’t show from the KJV text itself that the Bible supports the Father having a Father (a reading of Smith I stand by), they don’t have any business on the thread veering onto Assyriology and the compositional history of the OT.

Tell you what. I think Gordon B. Hinckley would be glad to clarify this issue of the Father having a Father for us (and also whether the Bible is full of it). Why don’t we just ask the Lord’s anointed beacon of doctrinal clarity? Maybe after all we don’t need the wisdom of fringe Mormon apologists to save us from the hopeless ambiguity of priesthood leadership?

Watching Conference, eagerly awaiting the next burst of doctrinal clarity to shine on upon us,

Aaron

But let’s not forget what we’re really talking about. You deleted posts because they brought up the views of higher criticism and more recent insight into the meaning of texts based upon Assyriology. That is what I find inexcusable. The approach to reading the scriptures as having been redacted to avoid such a pluralistic reading of “sons of God” and changing it to “children of Israel” is obvious in the Masoretic text. The question is why you felt somehow justified in deleting these posts. It is why I refuse to participate on your site — your dictatorship there ain’t benevolent how evermuch you wish to see it as such.

Joseph Smith was talking about the text before it was messed with by some “old Jew” (his words, not mine).

Specifically, he said that when referring to Genesis 1:1. It’s hardly warranted to say that characterizes the whole sermon. Perhaps there is more, but the only other time in the sermon I can think of where he appeals to esoteric knowledge is his having “translat[ed] the papyrus which is now in my house.” Outside of that, Smith repeatedly quotes from the Bible in an attempt to support his positions, and thinks men are fools for rejecting his doctrines given the evidence available in the Bible. All things considered, he didn’t think his positions were dependent on finding the pre-redaction meaning of the Old or New Testament.

As you know I don’t believe that Joseph taught that the Father had a Father — and it seems to me that my arguments are persuasive enough that you are not justified in just assuming you got him right (even if it is acknowledged that Mormons have traditionally read him that way).

Moreover, God had a Father if we speak of God the Son. So it isn’t the case that a being isn’t God if that being has a Father! Moreover, you have got to deal with the fact that the text of Psalm 82, 89, Dt. 32 and so forth (there are a lot more) still support a plurality of gods who are God’s very sons — the same kind and species as that term could only mean within the ancient Near Eastern melieu from which the texts derive.

So saying that Mike’s comments are off topic seems to me to really be saying — “I don’t want folks on my site exposed to critical biblical scholarship and and higher criticism.” But that just won’t wash in a competent and responsible conversation. At least you have found someone else to attack.

Again, best wishes.

I have looked at your thread (somewhat) recently. It hardly seems any more on topic than our discussion. In fact, some of your own posts are asking and furthering completely non-relevant issues. Your inability to see your own double standard is strikingly obvious.

I think I can let our conversation here stand as it is. Your avoidance of my questions speaks loud enough for itself (maybe your posts should just be deleted? :P ). I think the readers here can understand the full “story” now.

And by the way, I never claimed that Deut. was “distorted beyond its original message.” Statements such as these are simply misleading (I think both before and after the various redactions of Deut. it affirms a plurality of gods; although I do believe the archeological evidence and biblical texts do show changing views in Israel throughout its history). Because unwashed biblical studies do not square with your own personal understanding of scripture (very much a modern notion derived from 19th CE reactions to higher biblical criticism) is your own issue. I was simply discussing the compositional history and purposes and other historical events that surrounded the passages that were under discussion (many, including Deut. 32.17 were brought up by others, such as yourself). Just because it destroys its integrity according to your fundamentalist assumptions regarding the nature of scripture, hardly makes my posts irrelevant. If anything it just goes to show why you really deleted the posts.

Best wishes.

Are you suggesting the “text as we have it” can really be so completely divorced from its compositional history and the historical context which created it and the reasons for which it was made by its author(s)?

Mike, hypothetically granting that the OT text was significantly distorted beyond its original message, that wouldn’t change the fact that it says something now and has a message, even if it’s different than what it used to be before manipulation. Of course context is important for understanding a text, but attacking the historical integrity of a text can go beyond considering what is necessary to understanding the text as we have it today. The documentary hypothesis / JEDP theory is a huge can of worms that wasn’t necessary in the thread for determining whether the Bible teaches God the Father has a Father, which is what the original post was about (and what I wanted the conversation to return to).