I am pushing my limit here, so all I will say is that LDS neo-absolutism has all the problems that prompted the 15th century theological crisis, except worse. The upside is that relative incoherence is moderated by a good deal of common sense, in classic LDS (and to a lesser degree Arminian) fashion.

The other term I would give to BRM/JFS2 theology is “neo-absolutist”. Some people say “neo-orthodox” where orthodoxy is understood to be classical theism. Needless to say, I don’t think this is net forward progress, but nonetheless neo-absolutism is extremely influential in certain quarters of the Church, notably CES, and is a close mapping to LDS theology prior to 1835 (with certain fundamental additions of course).

#111 – Sometimes I wish a sound theological basis were more important in the Church as well…

On another note, after listening to the podcast between the Shaf-inator and Geoff, it appears to me that Aaron repeatedly skirts the issue. I can’t really think of a time when he actually answered one of Geoff’s questions in a straight-up-here-is-your-simple-answer way (like Geoff was asking for). He simply reverted to appeals to scripture to back up his interpretation.

So, I guess what I am trying to say is that I am with Geoff. Going back to the issue at hand, why even bother with missionary work if you are a Calvinist?

And, what is “instrumental difference” in the way that Aaron is employing the term? If the Calvinist god is truly omnipotent, and has predestined the unchangeable ends, than (hypothetically speaking, of course) it wouldn’t make a difference if there were no anti-any-religion folks at all. Whoever God wanted to save would still be saved, and whoever he wanted to damn would still be damned. Trying to defend that statement from a Calvinist point of view makes my head spin.

ALSO, (I have a lot to say today…) Calvinism seems to be awfully similar to a sort of unitarianism/universalism of religions. Technically speaking, you wouldn’t really NEED to even be a Christian to be saved (or damned), because that would place prerequisite status on having the right beliefs in order to be saved and thus deny and contradict what Aaron stated previously about having faith because you are saved instead of being saved because you have faith (which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense either).

PS, anyone going to the FAIR conference this summer?

First to Aaron’s assertion about vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy: 2 Peter 3:9

9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is alongsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should bperish, but that all should come to repentance.

If the Lord is willing that all should come to repentence it seems strange that he is actually unwilling to save everyone.

On the Subject of consistency with Mark D. I think it is a nice goal to be completely theologically consistent but I also think this ideology can lead to the over-correlation we saw with McConkie. On minor things it may be better to let contradictions stand.

The type of contradictions I am speaking of are some set of propositions that cannot obtain in any possible world. Classical theism seems to maintain a rather large number of them with regard to the attributes of God, although centuries of work have gone into resolving them in one manner or another.

For example, it is a scandal in classical theism to assert that anything we do affects God in any way. That is certainly consistent standing alone, but it is hardly consistent with numerous passages of scripture, so much so that classical theists tend to result to formalized double talk to explain the contradiction.