Operational Dynamics of “Reasoned Faith”

[I Have Questions]

if the Christian version is a composition, then the spirit = breath has got to be a bit of an abstraction, and one not really capable of an out-of-body experience or a near-death experience.

I’ve noticed the attempted use of NDEs and OBEs as support for LDS claims, but I haven’t followed closely, mostly because it doesn’t really move the needle for me either way.

As I understand how certain mopologists are utilising NDE’s it’s not as direct support for LDS claims. It’s more that NDE’s are evidence that the spirit and the body are two separate things, that the spirit is capable of leaving the body, and therefore living on beyond the lifespan of a physical body, which in turn then entertains the notion of an “afterlife” being plausible.

Of course, they are absolutely not evidence of a spirit separate to a body.

[Limnor]

I’ve noticed the attempted use of NDEs and OBEs as support for LDS claims, but I haven’t followed closely, mostly because it doesn’t really move the needle for me either way.

As I understand how certain mopologists are utilising NDE’s it’s not as direct support for LDS claims. It’s more that NDE’s are evidence that the spirit and the body are two separate things, that the spirit is capable of leaving the body, and therefore living on beyond the lifespan of a physical body, which in turn then entertains the notion of an “afterlife” being plausible.

Of course, they are absolutely not evidence of a spirit separate to a body.

That’s fair and I agree. At best they’re experiences people report, not evidence that a spirit actually exists apart from the body.

[Gadianton]

“Form” is more like “that which makes a thing the kind of thing it is.” So the soul is what makes the body a living thing instead of a corpse.

Which is, I think, a separation between Aquinas and the JW annihilation view.

I was more than ambitious by equating the two. I'm happy to say wrong. The JW idea is based on some choad picking up a concordance and researching a few words in the Bible and then starting a religion based on nobody but him knowing what the Bible says, except the folks who wrote the concordance he skimmed. Aquinas was a stuffy and influential philosopher who thought a great deal about every tiniest thing. I think Aquinas is guided by his belief in Aristotle and the various causes, in this case, the formal cause, which is like a blueprint for a thing. It's a way to map a Bible term into a philosophical system. But the net result does seem to be that Dan ain't roaming around the sands of Egypt as a disembodied something when his body dies.

later constructions designed to solve tensions the texts themselves leave unresolved

Absolutely.

Christianity has always allowed for similar experiences, visions and etc, but it doesn’t use them proof of anything—they generally involve some eschatological lesson or view.

You probably know more than I do here, how much has spiritualism influenced Christianity and Mormonism? For Mormonism, where there's smoke, there's fire; it usually gets it's ideas from somewhere else. Two example. The first is Jack Chick and his Chick tracts which I believe serve as a window into the mind of fundamentalist Christianity. In his tracts, when a person dies and meets God, an ethereal version of himself, clothes and all perhaps, rises from the husk and floats up to God and is either welcomed into heaven or dropped into a lake of fire. The depiction of the spirit is spot on what Mormons believe.

The second is the book Return from Tomorrow, which was hugely popular among Mormons when I was growing up. I'm guessing it's the most famous Christian NDE book, it's certainly the most famous Mormon NDE book. The author, who becomes Christian after the experience, relates how he dies and is shown around the afterlife by a mysterious being who he thinks might be Jesus, but he's not sayin' that. The being shows him various scenes, one where people are studying and learning in libraries, listening to exotic music, and in those libraries are books of all kinds; tablets and parchment (not sure about gold plates). And then there are spirits hanging around places they can't let go in the mortal world, and then spirits fighting and arguing on some other plane. The being explains that even that good place isn't heaven and then takes him into space and shows him a magnificent city in the distance but they aren't allowed to go there.

That book became proof for every Mormon in the 80s that the Mormon version of the afterlife is true. It's not a perfectly clean fit, but it's sure closer to the Mormon version than any Christian version I'm aware of. So in seminary the book was plugged all the time; read about this guy who is not a member of the Church who experiences the afterlife and it's pretty much what we believe.

[Dr. Sunstoned]

I am old enough to remember both Chick tracts and Return from Tomorrow. I used to collect the tracts. I had a girlfriend who worked at Chick in Southern California, and she would drive out to San Bernardino from Ontario and keep me supplied with all the latest tracts. She was Christian, but didn't take it real seriously, and had no problem overlooking my Mormonism.

Return from Tomorrow came out after I was married and living and working in Provo/Orem. It made a big splash at my work and in the local Mormon community. I am a born sceptic and have always wondered how things like clothes, buildings, rooms, library books, and other physical things exist in the spiritual realm. Where did the materials come from to create clothes, paper, books, etc.? Who made them? Do they have clothing and paper mills in heaven? This is the kind of crap that used to keep me up a night. Then I became an atheist and stopped worrying.

[I Have Questions]

George Ritchie waits until 1978 to tell people he met Jesus Christ in 1943. Sounds familiar.

He then felt himself flying over the country, trying to get back to Virginia to continue his training to be a doctor. At one point he came down in a town and tried to ask someone a question, but the man didn't hear or see him. (Ten months afterwards, Ritchie happened to travel through Vicksburg, Mississippi and saw the exact place he had seen during the experience.)

Well, that’s how he remembered it in 1978. Of course, he could just be guilty of a human memory retrospectively fitting things into the narrative to support what he wants to believe.

What did he write down in 1943? Who did he tell his story to in 1943? What is the name of the doctor and the ward boy in the story that supposedly found him dead? Have they corroborated the story at any point? Etc.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Did Eadie rip off Ritchie?

[Limnor]

You probably know more than I do here, how much has spiritualism influenced Christianity and Mormonism?

I don’t take anyone’s word for it about my relationship with God—even when I have doubts that there even is a God.

Chick’s tracts are almost comically cartoonish—but they aren’t intended to be a treatise on theological difficulties. I’m not sure most Christians think about the soul and the afterlife much more than a place of rest and solace; at least from my understanding. I’ve honestly never had as much in-depth discussion with Christians as I have had here—the quality of the questions and challenges is just nowhere close.

Ref spirituality and its influence on Christianity. I think Christianity has always allowed for spiritual or visionary experiences. The Apostle Paul, John, even controversial episodes like the Montanists seem to be “allowed” but generally those experiences are not treated as establishing doctrine. Paul himself reported visions but didn’t use them to build an in-depth theology of the soul or afterlife. I think these examples are what allow some people to claim Mormonism is Christian. While I don’t agree that the foundation is a one-for-one match, I can see how they could explain it as such.

I think the risk of spiritual experience functioning as doctrinal foundation or evidence of authority is where the problem intensifies—answering questions the texts themselves leave undefined. I see those instances as less about Christianity borrowing from spiritualism and more about how authority gets reassigned—sometimes with harmful effects. The effect is similar with Mormonism; the spirituality seems to be the anchor for authority, and you all are aware of the risks associated with that borrowing.

[Limnor]

I’m thinking through the relationship between the “spirit/soul” question and what that means in light of resurrection? Not like at the end of time, but Jesus’ resurrection and offer of life? If we are dead in sins what does all of that mean? If it even means anything at all. At the very least it is a thought experiment that might interest you.

I did think of an instance in which a vision affected doctrine—Peter’s vision of the sheet that represented cleanliness, with the metaphor extended to acceptance of Gentiles into the kingdom.

[Limnor]

Gad, and whoever else is reading along, please bear with me through this thought experiment about a relationship between “spirit” and resurrection, and what Paul seems to be doing in his explanations.

Once this thought process has exhausted itself in my mind, my intent is to move toward an exposition and study of the gap within Helaman and what I think it means.

While thinking through all of the preceding, I noticed something. Paul almost never talks about the soul, and I don’t think that’s accidental. In Paul, the problem he is describing isn’t “where does the soul go when you die?”, but that death itself is already present—internally.

That’s also why resurrection is important theologically. Paul doesn’t explain the continuity issue we have been discussing by describing an “immortal” part of us. If souls were naturally immortal, resurrection would be less significant, but Paul places a great amount of worth in resurrection. “If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised” only makes sense if death is a real enemy, not just a transition from one state of being to another.

But back to the original question, and the effect of spiritualism—or maybe expanded to later Greek influence (yes, I realize this concedes some ground). It doesn’t seem like early Christianity started with a developed “soul” doctrine. Greek thought provided a solution—conscious survival of the soul—and Christianity slowly leans into it, even while officially keeping resurrection.

But I think LDS theology does something unintentionally similar, even though it rejects Greek philosophical influence, at least on paper. By placing individual identity in eternal intelligence or a pre-embodied spirit, personal existence is never really at risk. Death becomes a phase, not an enemy, and resurrection can restore embodiment, but it doesn’t rescue existence itself. That thinking is closer to pre-Pauline Greek thought than to “you were dead, but God made you alive” language.

Paul’s method is much more shocking in its original context. Life isn’t an assumption, it’s given, and resurrection isn’t an upgrade, it’s the only thing that can defeat death.

[Rivendale]

I am old enough to remember both Chick tracts and Return from Tomorrow. I used to collect the tracts. I had a girlfriend who worked at Chick in Southern California, and she would drive out to San Bernardino from Ontario and keep me supplied with all the latest tracts. She was Christian, but didn't take it real seriously, and had no problem overlooking my Mormonism.

Return from Tomorrow came out after I was married and living and working in Provo/Orem. It made a big splash at my work and in the local Mormon community. I am a born sceptic and have always wondered how things like clothes, buildings, rooms, library books, and other physical things exist in the spiritual realm. Where did the materials come from to create clothes, paper, books, etc.? Who made them? Do they have clothing and paper mills in heaven? This is the kind of crap that used to keep me up a night. Then I became an atheist and stopped worrying.

The plates were apparently taken back to heaven which means refined spiritual material can touch and handle Earthly matter? I always wondered how that worked. Similarly how does an immaterial soul interact with matter and remain undetected? All of it made sense when I considered it was all made up by humans.