MI Fires Fiona?

[kairos]

Anyone know to whom Fiona was teaching about the feminine divine or exactly what she was teaching?
Who also were the complainers? To whom did they complain? This story has lots of gaps to be filled in by truth,prophecy and pure speculation- I hope a NDE
Is not involved!
k

[Tim]

Yes, that's right. It's not up to "Tim" or to "Physics Guy." Like all believing Latter-day Saints, I'm a Christian.

If you want to be a Christian, I'm all for it.

John Dehlin claims to be a Latter-day Saint. Do you accept him as one of your own?

[Sledge]

If you want to be a Christian, I'm all for it.

John Dehlin claims to be a Latter-day Saint. Do you accept him as one of your own?

I am a Christian because Mormonism is part of Christianity. There are thousands of other sects, too. There’s nothing special or exclusive about your particular sect.

John Dehlin does not claim to be a Latter-day Saint; not any more. But even if he did, that is a very specific reference. I cannot claim to be a Baptist unless I join a Baptist church, right?

I’m any case, it’s not up to me to determine which groups people belong to. It’s up to them and God.

[Tim]

If I claimed to be a Christian because I follow Jesus, but. . . .I describe Jesus as promiscuous man who taught that sex with children purified the parent and the child and acted on these beliefs, would you say I'm a Christian ? (real example of an unorthodox Christian sect)

[Tim]

And. . .it's hardly controversial to say that the LDS church isn't a part of orthodox Christianity. In fact, its stature outside of all of the churches that have fallen into apostasy is its reason for existence. You should be proud of that description. Every LDS missionary I've ever met has proclaimed it to me.

I didn't say the LDS Church wasn't Christian. I said it wasn't orthodox.

[Tim]

What's interesting is that there IS space in orthodox Christianity to see the divine feminine in the person of the Holy Spirit. BUT no space to talk about a Heavenly Mother.

That sounds interesting. Could you expound on it?

I'm not really an expert at it, someone like Ms. Jack would do a better job. The basic idea is that man and woman were made in the image of God. The Book of Proverbs anthropomorphized wisdom and described it as a woman. The Holy Spirit is "The Comforter" which is a feminine nurturing attribute. There's more to it than that, but that's the parts I remember (sorry for being lame). Most Christians wouldn't know what the heck I'm talking about, but the line as I understand it can be carried to a point within orthodoxy.

[IHAQ]

I am a Christian because Mormonism is part of Christianity. There are thousands of other sects, too. There’s nothing special or exclusive about your particular sect.

So that reads that you think there's nothing special or exclusive about Mormonism, it's just one sect within a collection of sects grouped and labelled as "Christianity". Is that what you think?

[Kishkumen]

If I claimed to be a Christian because I follow Jesus, but. . . .I describe Jesus as promiscuous man who taught that sex with children purified the parent and the child and acted on these beliefs, would you say I'm a Christian ? (real example of an unorthodox Christian sect)

If I claimed to be a follower of Jesus, but I describe Jesus as a creation of the Father, would you say that I am Christian (many Christians in history have believed exactly that!)?

I hope you don’t mind me replacing your grotesque and niche example with a more vanilla one.

[Physics Guy]

So I take it that Anglicans do not identify Jesus with Jehovah?

No. I don't know anyone who does this except Mormons.

For mainstream Christians the relationship between Jesus and Jehovah is vague because we're keen on the Trinity but it's obvious that the Old Testament doesn't know anything about the Trinity, so everything in the Old Testament about the personal nature and character of God has a big question mark over it. We think of Old Testament theology as primitive theology beyond which we have advanced in substantial ways, even though it was foundational and has to still count as right, somehow, in an appropriate interpretation. So there's a lot of wiggle room to translate things from what we suppose is "the Old Testament language" into what we would call New Testament—really, post-Nicene—terms.

I don't think I'm unfairly representing my own idiosyncratic views as mainstream, here. Perhaps not too many mainstream Christians would use the same words I have but I've heard a lot of awkward mumbling from a lot of preachers and Bible study leaders from a lot of denominations and I think my take is a fair one.

I'm pretty sure that "Is Jesus Jehovah?" is going to strike practically all mainstream Christians as a weird question that never gets asked and so probably somehow shouldn't be asked. It's an awkward one. Most will answer pretty quickly, "No, Jehovah is the Father." Then they'll probably hedge and say, "Or else maybe Jehovah refers to the Trinity as a whole." They won't be keen to dwell on the question at length, because it's inevitably going to highlight how very un-Trinitarian the Old Testament is. I think there'll be pretty close to universal agreement, though, across the whole board from Orthodox to Pentacostal, that simply "Jesus=Jehovah" definitely cannot be right.

[Physics Guy]

If I claimed to be a follower of Jesus, but I describe Jesus as a creation of the Father, would you say that I am Christian (many Christians in history have believed exactly that!)?

I think that back when Arians were a large fraction of all self-identified Christians, the Nicene Christians were indeed keen to say that the Arians did not count as true Christians. They were heretics. Naturally the Arians disagreed, but the Nicenes eventually won.

"Christian" is not a registered trademark today, of course. Anyone can call themselves whatever they want. But I think it's a sociological fact that all the big old Christian denominations, from Orthodox through to independent evangelicals that acknowledge no authority beyond the Bible and their own congregations, explicitly and emphatically teach that Christianity means Trinitarianism.

I haven't conducted any surveys. But I've read a lot of pious Christian literature across a wide range of denominations, and hung out with keenly religious Christians of a lot of kinds. Virtually everybody I've read or met has always agreed that there is a super-set of "Christianity" that includes all the denominations, even though the others may be wrong about important things, and the Trinity has always been the big touchstone, one of the few basic common elements that defines the super-set.

Nobody understands it but everybody is sure it's important. Perhaps it's precisely because it's unclear what it means that it's a good safe thing upon which to agree.

So if Mormons want to say they are Christians then of course they can call themselves that, but as an exercise in clear communication they should probably add, "But not Trinitarians", or something like that, in order to avoid misunderstandings. Mormon beliefs are outside what most Christians have always been taught defines "Christian". If Mormons call themselves "Christian", they are defining the term in an atypical way.