Mormon Universalism - are the temple ceremonies really necessary?

[drumdude]

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... -free.html


Over at a certain not-to-be-named blog there is a group of Mormons patting each other on the back for the Mormon doctrine of universal salvation. Well, universal as long as a living Mormon endures hours of tedious rote worship inside a gawdy 80's-shopping-mall themed temple.

As they do - a thinking Mormon steps up with an unorthodox but perfectly logical opinion:

I don't think there's anything wrong with the [LDS baptism for the dead] ceremony per se but it strikes me as unnecessary. The priest who would have baptized Radbod claimed to know something he did not. To insist that God cannot save the unbaptized is to claim that there is a limit to his power. To say that he won't is to claim knowledge which you do not have.

This, of course, ruffles a few feathers.

On the other hand if he were all powerful then why the need for an atonement? He could forgive whomever he wanted and that would be the end of the argument. But he has designed things in such a way that we must participate in the process of being reconciled to him--and the foremost reason for so doing (in my opinion) is to protect agency.

Well, if you're an "absolute-sovereignty" type Protestant, I suppose you can believe that God can do whatever He wants.

However, Latter-day Saints believe that God is morally good, in a way that is meaningfully comparable to how He expects us to be morally good. Thus, when Jesus emphatically teaches Nicodemus that baptism is essential to salvation, we think that taking Him at His word is more humble than airily dismissing His teaching.

This is what happens, brethren, when you stray from the correlated teaching materials and start thinking for yourself. Suddenly you'll turn Joseph's idea of vicatious baptism into the vile idea of complete Universalism. Just imagine the LDS religion without the threat of your family not being together forever. Imagine Mormonism without the 10% income tax. How can the corporation be expected to survive if Christ is truly Christlike??

[Philo Sofee]

You actually hit on something critical here. The vast majority of doctrines in all churches are simply invented problems from their viewpoint, for which they say they can solve, thus making them relevant instead of irrelevant. NO ONE is allowed to question the validity or logic of the doctrines, because if one actually does discover that it isn't a church that saves you (is saving even in need?!) then that church becomes fundamentally irrelevant! And they do not want you to come to that knowledge... Notice the Mormon assumption is typically the Western one of thinking God is separate out there somewhere... it is the assumption that puts all the doctrines into place. What I have come to call my own "Medicine for the Soul" - Alan Watt's writings - shows a much more pleasant, and much more doable religion without all the mickey mouse ad hoc doctrines invented in order to attempt some sort of impossible coherent theology. Islam may actually have the one up on all the Western churches. "There is only God." I mean, seriously, that simplifies absolutely 99% of Mormonism's conundrums, which conundrums involve every single doctrine they believe is true! Think on that...

[drumdude]

There's no business better than being able to sell the disease and the cure!

[dantana]

Yeah, B. for the D. is just all a bit of a head scratcher. I mean, either the act itself is a physical, mechanical thing or a mental, spiritual thing. A physical, mechanical alteration of the matter of the body/morefinematter spirit body. But, how could dunking someone in proxy have any effect on the target dead guys morefinematter spirit body? If it is just simply an act of contrition, how does one guy saying - save me Jesus - contribute to the target dead guys eternal point score bank?

Sounds like a lot of heavenly bureaucracy to me

[Moksha]

Bet those naysayers would be surprised to learn that God was already a 32nd Degree Mason and wished to have the ceremony recreated in future Mormon Temples.

Tokens to the left
Tokens to the right
On apron, off apron
Fight, fight, fight!

Go Temples!!!

[IHAQ]

Proxy baptisms are a flawed concept. Unless they can be done for everyone that ever lived they are rendered pointless. What I mean is, for those souls who died leaving no record of their existence, how do they receive a proxy baptism? They don’t. But apologists will say that God will have a way for dealing with that. If God has a way for dealing with that then it means proxy baptisms aren’t actually necessary for the plan to be completed.

[Kishkumen]

This argument goes back to Late Antiquity (Early Medieval) times. Are rituals necessary or not? Are rituals detrimental or helpful? Are people who engage in rituals enlightened or superstitious? In recent centuries it was the Protestants who decided that ritual was either minimally useful or harmful. Catholicism was rejected as so much hocus pocus with its rites, including Mass. The rituals that were left were to be understood as symbolic. Mormonism positioned itself somewhere in the middle. Ordinances are necessary, but they are also symbolic. The sacrament is a prime example. The bread and the water symbolize the body and blood of Christ, whereas in Catholic and Orthodox Christianity they ARE the body and blood of Christ. But one must renew their covenants by partaking of the sacrament weekly. So, both this and that.

The temple fits comfortably in this paradigm.

How did Mormonism get where it is? I think by combining Protestant religion with folk Christianity and magic. You can see LDS people these days leaning away from the ritual because the dominant culture in our times is very cerebral and disembodied. Salvation comes from *knowing* the Church is true and giving consistent lip service to its authority. Salvation was always universal in Mormonism, but now the distinctions between degrees of salvation are falling away. Mormons in times past sought the advantage and security that ordinances of salvation bring. Now people have only a vague notion of what all of this is about. They do it because they are told to, not because they feel any need to.

[Philo Sofee]

Kish
You can see LDS people these days leaning away from the ritual because the dominant culture in our times is very cerebral and disembodied.

Oh my goodness what a profound way to state it Kish... your entire last paragraph I will mull over I think is deep. Thanks for sharing. Especially in light of what I am learning about the ritual of religious undertaking in antiquity, and I don't mean the mere youthful 3,500 B.C. antiquity either...amazing ideas have come out in the last 30 years with several authors showing things happening as far back as Goebekli Tepi 10,900 B.C.! TRUE story man! Brain C. Maruresku has just changed my thinking in so very many ways man... "The Immortality Key," one of the coolest, fascinating themes I have run across in the last 20 years of my life, and I am pursuing many of his sources like a bat outta hell and continue to do so.

Mormonism's restoration no question now definitely at least goes back to and through Free Masonry themes, yet those themes are truly in much earlier cultures. But interestingly enough, the pure juice of the restoration was missed by Smith, that juice going way, way, way back, and involving, of all things, WOMEN as the main initiators of the mysteries, WOMEN as the main guides (the Muses) into the Underworld for real knowledge, and the goddesses administering the sacrament, the "real religion" of hoary antiquity, none of which Joseph Smith even had an inkling of. But he did present us with some good stuff, to be sure, just not the cream of the crop. Maruresku is the greatest hint of them all where that will lie, and the sources h uses enhances his view like nothing else I have ever read. Truly FUN, FUN stuff man.... I know, I know, I am being too vague, sorry, just gotta figure out a way to present it better than I can for the time being... I now do know my studying the Greek is a correct move on my part however. Now, I just gotta buckle down and get serious with it...ayiyi.

[Rivendale]

Yeah, B. for the D. is just all a bit of a head scratcher. I mean, either the act itself is a physical, mechanical thing or a mental, spiritual thing. A physical, mechanical alteration of the matter of the body/morefinematter spirit body. But, how could dunking someone in proxy have any effect on the target dead guys morefinematter spirit body? If it is just simply an act of contrition, how does one guy saying - save me Jesus - contribute to the target dead guys eternal point score bank?

Sounds like a lot of heavenly bureaucracy to me

I have always been intrigued by the physics of ordinances and deity communication. What meta spiritual "switch" is turned on by being submerged in water? Is Kolob a Dune type planet where water is considered sacred? Why the temple ritual of hand signs and chanting? What spiritual goo is added to ones mortal body that allows greater blessings to self organize in our random mortal world. It would stand out in the patterns of society if these things actually worked. Mormon hospitals would be statistically far better than secular ones. A completely obedient member would circumnavigate their lives with the bare minimum of suffering. Supernatural communication has to be done in stealth mode as to not uncover the identity of a ghost that can simultaneously communicate with 7 billion people. The celestial command center for communication must be amazing.

[Kishkumen]

I have always been intrigued by the physics of ordinances and deity communication. What meta spiritual "switch" is turned on by being submerged in water? Is Kolob a Dune type planet where water is considered sacred? Why the temple ritual of hand signs and chanting? What spiritual goo is added to ones mortal body that allows greater blessings to self organize in our random mortal world. It would stand out in the patterns of society if these things actually worked. Mormon hospitals would be statistically far better than secular ones. A completely obedient member would circumnavigate their lives with the bare minimum of suffering. Supernatural communication has to be done in stealth mode as to not uncover the identity of a ghost that can simultaneously communicate with 7 billion people. The celestial command center for communication must be amazing.

Yeah, why? I think it is a fair question. When it is asked in a certain way in order to satisfy a certain species of expectations, the explanations will either be the sound of crickets or the sort of ridiculous images so vividly and hilariously portrayed above. That said, I think we can all appreciate that exercising good character as an embodied human being has outcomes that differ from philosophizing on "the good." One can philosophize all day, and yet nothing may be accomplished since the principles were never put into action. With some of these relationships (between thought and action) there is greater immediacy and clarity. In these cases, one does not bat an eye but simply accepts the value of doing good things. Other such relationships are less immediate and less clear. If we try to fill in the blanks with the goal of ridiculing, this is a rich field for growing crops of laughter. On the other hand, it may be beneficial to meditate on the bigger picture and the moral good as part of a well defined community of like minds through the vehicle of ritual. Thinking and doing. Philosophy and ritual.

If you are not part of it, or you don't vibe with it, it seems like a bunch of pointless silliness. If you are part of it, if you partake of it, and you vibe with it, it can be a very elevating experience. It certainly was for me.