Formal Mormon Theology

[Gadianton]

that means that “love” is an eternal law higher and outside of Elohim, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God #4 in the divine council, etc.

possibly...

In an infinite regress of gods who became gods by adherence to laws outside of themselves, that means these gods are potent or changeable...Love could actually now mean something entirely else in the next 5 minute

Did you read yourself two sentences ago?

[Ego]

As Mormonism denies creation ex nihilo but posits that Elohim created out of pre-existent material (intelligences, “forms” if you want to go full Platonic) that means that “love” is an eternal law higher and outside of Elohim, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God #4 in the divine council, etc.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that Mormonism is platonic in that way. Obviously if love were a true form then it would be quite unchanging, but I think you’re quite right that what once was unconditional love has now become love conditional on keeping covenants, etc. to name an actual example of when the teachings of God’s love has been arbitrarily changed.

[Ego]

I think it's a creative idea to use the Moses scripture as your definition of love, I don't know if that's a KJV classic or not, if not, then even better.

A challenge I see with it is restricting it to God. The likely response is that evil will inevitably betray each other, thus such alliances are temporary conveniences. But the bonds of the righteous aren't infallible. Ideological betrayals are just as significant among good people as they are bad people. Consider the need of experiencing the purest love in order to qualify as a Son of Perdition.

In movies, bad people usually fall out based on simple impulses like greed or lust. But a real monster will be ideological, and two such individuals seeking to be of one mind create love, per the Moses definition.

Wise observations. I wanted to lay this out as the most basic definition for love because specifically two types of love which I will further develop in the theology are both rooted in this. To be quick and imprecise since I haven’t explained the postulates for them yet, there is a general love which is like charity for anyone and everyone in which a person’s natural tendency to have a ‘will to power’ and ‘will to pleasure’ (as Nietzsche and Freud showed are virtually inescapable motivations for peoples’ actions) for himself extends towards others also; essentially the golden rule. Then there is a particular love as in developing a relationship with ‘this particular person’ rather than the general compassion that would extend towards strangers and friends alike; this is characterized first by the fact that even if a person is open to and wanting a relationship with another, whether or not this love comes to fruition has much more to do with if the other person reciprocates, and secondly it is characterized by a person being willing to let another into their confidences (which I have tied to the concept of esotericism when it comes to a relationship with God).

Love in the one heart and one mind sense was used in Moses to describe Zion; call it socialist or communist, it was described at its core as a eusocial superorganism in nature (like any ant colony or some bee colonies). A research paper I have misplaced described that humans are unique in that they can but do not necessarily form superorganisms with each other. These can be small coalitions like the ideological cults you described, or much larger scale like corporations or small states. I will not dispute that these use the same mechanics for love as I have outlined. What I will say is that the real virtue of love then, comes in the degree it is to. Is it confined to a very few or is it abounding for all people? Is it limited in capacity or is it unconditional? (Referring to general love, not whether a person is allowed into another’s confidences which should have boundaries like any healthy relationship). I hope that responded well enough to that point.

Now if my memory serves me the ability to become a son of perdition was predicated not on perfect love but on perfect knowledge. I would suggest the hypothesis that this perfect knowledge is knowledge of the noumenal existence of God (as in knowledge that God definitely exists independent of my subjective experience of the world, that is to say, He is neither delusion nor hallucination). In the case of a will of love or pride this would mean that a potential son of perdition has perfect sonder, they know full well that God who they betray has consciousness and is a being apart from themselves, and yet choose to act in pride of epic proportions against Him. At least that is how I would render the theology, unfortunately I think Mr. Smith was rather fond of declaring people sons of perdition in the early history of the church merely if they had a vision of God (a phenomenal experience that could have been hallucination as opposed to noumenal knowledge) and then chose to leave the church.

[Gadianton]

Now if my memory serves me the ability to become a son of perdition was predicated not on perfect love but on perfect knowledge. I would suggest the hypothesis that this perfect knowledge is knowledge of the noumenal existence of God

Absolutely true, I admit I'm speculating. I think other attributes are presupposed when granting the viewing of God in the flesh, otherwise God operates akin to the US government letting Bob Lazar into S-4. You can't really fault the guy for blabbing if you failed so miserably in vetting.

With Lucifer, It's possible he was prideful for eons, and faked his way up the ranks and God allowed it it, knowing full well he never really desired unity.

However, I'm thinking along the lines of, if God can "cease to be God", then one who does have full unity could in theory fall, whether or not it's ever happened. And if that were to happen, then such a being would exceed Lucifer in terms of evil.

And it stands that if a being a greater evil could exist, and if there must be opposition in all things, then the degree of goodness in the system remains untested to the degree to which it could be tested, and all of the Gods are slightly worse off for that. Victims of their own success.

As for your other points, I've noted them and ready to move on as you decide.

[Mag’ladroth]

As Mormonism denies creation ex nihilo but posits that Elohim created out of pre-existent material (intelligences, “forms” if you want to go full Platonic) that means that “love” is an eternal law higher and outside of Elohim, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God #4 in the divine council, etc.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that Mormonism is platonic in that way. Obviously if love were a true form then it would be quite unchanging, but I think you’re quite right that what once was unconditional love has now become love conditional on keeping covenants, etc. to name an actual example of when the teachings of God’s love has been arbitrarily changed.

My text didn’t post. Sorry for the double post! Here’s what I meant to include:

It’s very curious to me how even Blake Ostler punts on this disturbing similarity and his fans at Ward Radio instead do the old school FAIR/FARMS tactic of ad hom and tu quoque.

In an infinite regress of gods, what created these forms or are these forms simply just there? If the forms are simply there then that means Mormonism rather than a Christian cult becomes an old school polytheistic religion with contigent gods.

If it’s turtles all the way down until we reach the One who created these forms then that means the One who created the forms is the god that should be worshipped and not the derivative ones of Mormonism.

[Ego]

My text didn’t post. Sorry for the double post! Here’s what I meant to include:

It’s very curious to me how even Blake Ostler punts on this disturbing similarity and his fans at Ward Radio instead do the old school FAIR/FARMS tactic of ad hom and tu quoque.

In an infinite regress of gods, what created these forms or are these forms simply just there? If the forms are simply there then that means Mormonism rather than a Christian cult becomes an old school polytheistic religion with contigent gods.

If it’s turtles all the way down until we reach the One who created these forms then that means the One who created the forms is the god that should be worshipped and not the derivative ones of Mormonism.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. Personally I think that Pseudo-Dionysius’s concept of the One is the unavoidable logical conclusion one would draw from Mormon Theology. I don’t see why it needs to be disturbing as you say, in fact it is genuinely reflected in my own beliefs in ways I won’t go into. However for the orthodox Mormon that would undoubtedly be considered heretical. So to steel man a counter possibility that would likely be more accepted, I would suggest that in Mormon theology, just as the Father and every spirit of any person exists on self-existent principles and have from all eternity and will for all eternity, so too would the forms. They would not be contingent, either for their inception or for their continued existence, on anything but themselves. The forms would then be best reverenced in the way Jordan Peterson would conceptualize ‘worship’ as in simply a value in a hierarchy that you use to orient your goals, but beyond that, because of their lack of personhood or higher creator, this would still leave room for the worship of personal Gods in the more traditional sense of the word worship.

[Ego]

However, I'm thinking along the lines of, if God can "cease to be God", then one who does have full unity could in theory fall, whether or not it's ever happened. And if that were to happen, then such a being would exceed Lucifer in terms of evil.

I’ve genuinely never considered the scriptures about God ceasing to be God in a given circumstance reflecting the potential that He could change His will from love to pride. I’ll tell you what; this leads neatly into the postulates I have about the nature of will. So I’ll present them and then let’s discuss whether or not I’m right in taking them as givens within the Mormon framework.

The following are observations on the nature of will:
Will is a part of the true essence of a person. G
Will is part of the true essence because a person cannot phenomenally perceive will, he can only perceive manifestations or expressions of that will. Even if another person tells him she loves him, she could be lying; even words are but phenomena.

A will can be in varying degrees or infinite. H
A person may love another, but sometimes when the stakes are too high, he may not be true to that love. Alternatively it is taught that there is nothing a person can do and there is no situation in which Father and Jesus would cease to love a person. An additional connotation of this is that a person may want to have a degree of unity with the other, but is not willing to have total unity with the true essence of the other whereas one with an infinite love would be willing to go all in.

An infinite will is unchanging and absolute. I
“For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee…” (Isaiah 54:10). The analogy of mountains departing, an erosion process taking millions of years, should be sufficient to show that it is implied that the Lord has an infinite and unchanging will that will outlast even the mountains which therefore suggests that it is possible to have such a will.

A will to a degree is able to change. J
I justify this on the basis that it is said that anything but the absolute (or infinite) evil/pride of a son of perdition can be repented of.

People have an innate will to have power and pleasure. K
This is shown by Nietzsche and Freud so I will not try to explain it here.

(Note, I can give postulates A-F as well as L-Q later, but we’ll start with these)

[Gadianton]

I think most leaders and members assume libertarian free will, allowing God to turn on a dime and cease to be God, but assume he just wouldn't ever do that; end of story. I don't think your description can maintain libertarian free will. A rare bird faithful member has been known to reject libertarian free will -- but that is a big sacrifice in terms of available rhetoric for the lambasting of other faiths that teach predestination. It may be a necessary sacrifice to do theology, as libertarian freedom is a conceptually vacuous position, at least as far as I am aware.

Whether you are saying God and Satan inherently can't change, or through the momentum of tiny decisions over eons are effectively unable to change, the result is that your love or pride modes of character aren't going to flip. In my comments, I assume libertarian free will, as I think it's central to Chapel Mormonism, even though it doesn't make sense. You've found some scripture to back up your alternative view, so, I guess we just wait and see what you come up with.

[Ego]

In most cases I would agree that libertarian free will is the standard. Though I’ve never really heard it discussed if God could turn evil. Personally it seemed less like an assumption and more like an express teaching that he will never like in the teaching that God is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

We note that this is an unchanging nature that transcends time itself; a person can have perfect confidence that He will never change in the future because He has never changed in the past.

The problem comes because there are pre Mormon scriptures like that which say he has always been the same, but then Mr. Smith throws us the curveball in the King Follet Discourse. The potential for a mortal person who sins to become a God implies that in the infinite regression there are many Gods who at one point sinned but that do so no more. However, as far as I know, the teachings about a god being immutable even in retrospect was never retracted by Mr Smith; we read in D&C 132:20 “Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them….”

We could interpret this to mean that they simply have always existed, which was definitely a teaching of Mr. Smith; however, given the context of this verse being all about exaltation, it is improbable that it is merely a friendly reminder that they have existed forever. Much more likely this verse is affirming that they have inherited the immutable, time-transcendent God nature which according to the Bible seems includes an infinite will of love which we can assume would be transcendent of their prior fallible will, giving them a new self or identity, which for all intents and purposes has been the same forever (perhaps a unification with the form of love?).

[Gadianton]

Personally it seemed less like an assumption and more like an express teaching that he will never like in the teaching that God is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

In general I think the scriptures are on your side, this is what the scriptures teach, a God of determinism, including the Book of Mormon. Even the one scripture about God falling should probably be read as a (ahem) very anachronistic theological brief on paradoxes. Could God fall? Could God make a rock so big he can't move it? At the time of the Book of Mormon publishing, was Smith thinking about exaltation?

It's once you get into the stuff you note about King Follet or even places in the D&C and I'm sure the journal of Discourses with Orson Pratt and others who if I recall are obsessed with evolution, that ordinary readings of the scriptures could change. A direct hit is also: "It is not written that there is no end to this torment" "Eternal is his name" etc.

I've probably overgeneralized the Chapel Mormon position. I should qualify it as the deep doctrine Chapel Mormon position. I doubt most Mormons believe God can fall, but then they will see the problem if you ask if he has free will. The only real example I can give that was popularized comes from Cleon Skousen. Like him or not, every Chapel Mormon from my time had his book The First Two Thousand Years in their library. He taught that God walks a razors edge, emphasizing his persistent will, like the best tight rope walker in the universe. The implication is that it wouldn't be much of a show if there wasn't that chance that it could all come to an end. I always like this idea, what good is a galactic struggle between good and evil if evil is guaranteed to lose? It's just for show?

The potential for a mortal person who sins to become a God implies that in the infinite regression there are many Gods who at one point sinned but that do so no more

Right, the biggest can of worms ever opened, and my favorite deep doctrine. In coming to grips, Mormon leaders (unwittingly) recast the Ontological Argument in their own uniquely Mormon way. Anselm: Wouldn't it be better if the greatest being ever to be thought really existed? Therefore it must exist. Brigham: It might be that a bunch of Gods out there sinned, but wouldn't it be better if ours did not? Therefore, our Father must also have been a sinless Christ on his home world!

But wouldn't it be even better if the Father's Father also didn't sin? So it must be the case, that to feel special as Brighamite Mormons, that we come from a pure lineage of Christ-Gods that goes all the way back.

But step it up a notch. Because there are an infinite number of Christ-Gods going back and also an infinite number of lineages with one of more "exalted garbage truck drivers," wouldn't that make an equal number of royalty vs. non-royalty Gods? That can't be right. Intuitively, it would seem like there would be more worlds with sinner Gods than sinnless Gods, but yet, infinity = infinity. Or does it? Brigham Young died about the time papers in transfinite numbers were getting published, and it's possible that somewhere in the Journal of Discourses or the Millennial Star, some high IQ Elder faced this uniquely Mormon selective pressure of both abstract thought and personal specialness, such as to make advances in mathematical logic before they are formally recognized to have been made.