I think you for­got their atone­ment in the Gar­den of Geth­semene, that was accom­plished when Jesus sweated blood, not really on the cross, or it was part of it all, I get con­fused by all of their stuff but I think I remem­ber being told that that was impor­tant.
Truly, I am with you, if they would just be hon­est and drop all of the Chris­t­ian rhetoric, which they have no right to call them­selves, the JW’s can­not rightly pos­sess the term either things would be much clearer. Glenn Beck was an emo­tional idiot with Al Sharp­ton the other night, “am I a Chris­t­ian? Am I a bigot?” Dear Glenn, that would be a “No, you are an apos­tate to your Catholic faith” You gave up Jesus Christ for what? Catholics have great fam­ily val­ues and sobri­ety too. What is the Mighty Rev sup­posed to do, be hon­est? He’s never hon­est, he’s a polit­cal ani­mal and that would be sui­cide, he’d never get to come back!
I, how­ever, have no prob­lem vot­ing for a Mor­man, as long as a can­di­date is pro­life, con­ser­v­a­tive and won’t insti­tute sharia law, I pretty good with them…
Great posts…
Christ is Risen!
Mary-Leah

Indeed, He is Risen!

Atone­ment in the Gar­den: No kid­ding. In the Gar­den??? You know, there’s so much of their stuff that’s just severely weird that after a while it makes your head swim. Spend­ing even this much time try­ing to get to the bot­tom of it, you gotta admire the art they’ve made out of pick­ing their words so care­fully that they can fool some peo­ple. I mean, you obvi­ously don’t want to lead off with the Mr. & Mrs. God thing — might tip off even the less atten­tive Christians.

Didn’t see Glenn Beck and Rev­erend Al — sounds like a bit of a fiasco. So who won?

Most excel­lent post, Grace. I’m pla­gariz­ing it some­day, somewhere…I’ll attribute it if I can remem­ber where I got it, but at my age, no promises! The atone­ment in the gar­den isn’t pecu­liar to the Mor­mons, actu­ally. If I recall cor­rectly there was a Russ­ian Ortho­dox the­olo­gian (Bul­gakov?) who the­o­rized that also. It has also been around protes­tant cir­cles, which may be where Bul­gakov(?) picked it up (the West­ern cap­tiv­ity of Rus­sia thing). Noth­ing new under the sun.

Cool post. S-P and any­one else shoud spread it around the inter­net. If we could only get Mor­mons to read and under­stand it. As for Rom­ney, I could see vot­ing for him over any Democ­rats, espe­cially that bunch of wacko social­ists who’ve already announced. Like Carter’s pres­i­dency draw­ing folks to evan­gel­i­cal­ism (not hor­ri­bly bad, actu­ally), Romney’s faith would end up draw­ing a good num­ber of peo­ple to the “good val­ues” prac­ticed by The “Church” of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter Day “Saints.”

BTW, I don’t know much about Mor­mon doc­trine, but that “revi­sion” stat­ing “And He and Joseph Smith (12) shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead…” doesn’t seem to me to say that Smith will be a co-judge as the foot­note sug­gests. Rather it sounds like Smith will be the first one res­ur­rected. But, I’m no theologian–Orthodox, Mor­mon, or otherwise.

Actu­ally the Rev got the best of Glenn, because Glenn got offended. Imus got brought back up (sigh) and that is when the Rev got the best of Glenn. Ya kinda had to hear the exchange. I don’t know if Glenn just gave up, but he really seem too…
I found this:
He fur­ther stated on that same page: “It was in Geth­se­mane that Jesus took on Him­self the sins of the world, in Geth­se­mane that His pain was equiv­a­lent to the cumu­la­tive bur­den of all men, in Geth­se­mane that He descended below all things so that all could repent and come to Him” (Teach­ings of Ezra Taft Ben­son– LDS Pres­i­dent 1986, pg.15).
In his book “The Promised Mes­siah,” Mor­mon Apos­tle Bruce R. McConkie (mem­ber Quo­rum of the Twelve Apos­tles, 1972) wrote, “For­give­ness is avail­able because Christ the Lord sweat great drops of blood in Geth­se­mane as he bore the incal­cu­la­ble weight of the sins of all who ever had or ever would repent” (pg. 337). On page 552 of the same book McConkie con­tin­ues by say­ing, “In a gar­den called Geth­se­mane, out­side Jerusalem’s walls, in agony beyond com­pare, he took upon him­self the sins of all men on con­di­tion of repen­tance.“
As to Bul­gakov, he was con­demned as a heretic by Met. Krapovit­sky for his dab­bling with Sophi­ol­ogy to the dis­may of many in the west. I have yet to read of any Ortho­dox teach­ing that we are ever atoned for by our Lord and Sav­ior sweat­ing blood in the Gar­den of Geth­semene. If you want to make this claim that this is some­thing that has been taught, come up with the source, not just some flimsy, airy, oh that’s old stuff, com­ment. Remem­ber, though that in Ortho­doxy a teach­ing must be con­sid­ered Ortho­dox by every­one, not some one off goofy priest of a the­olo­gion who goes the wrong way like Bul­gakov appar­ently did, he doesn’t speak for Ortho­doxy, no one man does.
Truly He is Risen!
the hand­maid,
Mary-Leah

s-p:
That’s the thing I love about old age: you can use it as a handy excuse for all the stuff you were going to do any­way. Pla­gia­rize away. It would be fit­ting, see­ing as I still have your quick def­i­n­i­tion of Ortho­doxy as the begin­ning of my “What is Ortho­doxy?” arti­cle. I credit you, but you know, I’m get­ting older too, so that could change at any time.

I had read some­thing by John Max­i­movitch about how far off-base Bulgakov’s the­ol­ogy was, and I didn’t know who that was. Makes a lot of sense, now that I know.

Hand­maid Mary-Leah:
Indeed He is Risen!

That’s the prob­lem with Glenn Beck, IMHO. He just spazzes out some­times and ends up over­shad­ow­ing his point with his own emo­tion­al­ism and drama. I don’t really know how a per­son argues with some­one like Al Sharp­ton, but los­ing your cool seems like a mistake.

By the way, unless I miss my guess, s-p wasn’t try­ing to say Bul­gakov wasn’t a bad guy or that the Church can’t spot a heresy when it sees one. I think he’s just point­ing out that these things have a way of turn­ing up like a bad penny. The salient point about it being prof­fered to the Ortho­dox Church is that it was utterly rejected, which means the Church was doing her job.

Now, if the Protes­tant Church had been doing her job, per­haps there wouldn’t be a Mor­mon church today. Not that it would’ve been taken out by vio­lence or cen­sure, but because its illog­i­cal, bizarre and het­ero­dox teach­ings would’ve been laughed off completely.

Liz,
I won­der if get­ting Mor­mons to read it would make any dif­fer­ence. I would have assumed that they already knew all this and were ready to defend it tooth and nail because (a) they’d been taught to do that, and (b)people some­times get fero­ciously pro­tec­tive of even a twisted belief sys­tem, if they think the alter­na­tive is not hav­ing any belief sys­tem at all.

Joseph Smith and the res­ur­rec­tion: I see what you mean. But it seems to me they’ve left the door open there to mean what­ever they want it to mean. To me, if you’re say­ing that no man or woman will enter heaven with­out his con­sent, you have to be putting him in a posi­tion as judge. But I sup­pose a per­son could just deny that.

In any case it is, of course, com­pletely out­ra­geous hubris.

Hi Mary Leah (and Grace), Yes, Bul­gakov was con­demned for “sophia”, and Grace is cor­rect, I wasn’t say­ing this is Ortho­dox teach­ing, merely that it has popped up in the Ortho­dox Church. I have about 3,000 books on my shelf and 20,000 saved files on all kinds of stuff so I can’t remem­ber which one of them I found that in. You are cor­rect, its not Ortho­dox, and it has never been affirmed as “Ortho­dox” by the Church. Thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion. If I remem­ber where I saw that and exactly who taught it, I’ll post it on this com­ment page.

The Brigham Young com­ment about Joseph Smith is sim­ple. Joseph Smith restored truths that were lost as part of the great apos­tasy as was proph­e­sied. If one wants to gain exal­ta­tion in the world to come, they need to accept the work that Joseph did. In this sense, he becomes a gate­keeper; how­ever, the true gate­keeper is Christ and it is through faith on his name and our good works that we gain our eter­nal reward.

Uh huh. Well, at about this point there’s really noth­ing else to say.

FWIW, I don’t think it’s very likely that you’ll con­vince any of my read­ers — much less my lovely self — of this, so you might want to save up your key­stroke strength for greener pastures.

Just look­ing to inform. You seemed to ques­tion the com­ment by Brigham Young. I just wanted to give you the per­spec­tive of a mem­ber of the Church. Oh–and sorry to hear that you don’t live in green pas­tures

David,
I think you’re engag­ing in a bit of wish­ful think­ing, con­sciously or uncon­sciously. I wasn’t ques­tion­ing that state­ment at all. I think it stands alone — it’s just grandiose delu­sional non­sense, as is so much of the early stuff. It’s cer­tainly not your fault that your founder and his heir appar­ent couldn’t have been a lit­tle more cir­cum­spect with their claims, but offer­ing minor inter­pre­ta­tion of their out­landish procla­ma­tions may not be as suc­cess­ful a ploy as you imag­ine. It’s like fol­low­ing behind some­one that thinks he’s Napoleon to make sure every­one notices what a nice hat he’s wearing.

David and Grace,
I think the bot­tom line comes down to faith. After 1800 years of apos­tasy and false Chris­tian­ity God finally decides to intro­duce to the entire world “truths that were lost in the great apos­tasy” through Joseph Smith… AND many of these “truths” bear lit­tle or no resem­blance to much of what is accepted as “Truth” as taught in the Scrip­tures or bear a lot of resem­blance to here­sies taught in the first 3 cen­turies of Church his­tory? That is as fan­tas­magor­i­cal (or moreso) as believ­ing that the “truth once for all deliv­ered to the saints” was pre­served and taught and believed for 2000 years with­out the need for a late com­ing prophet to restore some­thing that is not really a “restora­tion” but a lot of inno­va­tion. Either we hang with the words of Christ in the Bible that the gates of hades won’t pre­vail against the his­toric Church estab­lished by Christ on Pen­te­cost, or we hang with the lat­ter day prophet or apos­tle of our choice dat­ing any­where from 35AD to present, teach­ing the doc­trines we can con­vince our­selves are true. In all ages includ­ing apos­tolic times there is a plethora of dog­mas to choose from. I own an icon that is older than the Mor­mon Church. By faith, I’ll hang with the Church that pro­duced that icon. In the end we can’t pre­tend we are all say­ing the same thing… we’re not. One is right, one is wrong. That is not to judge the sin­cer­ity or zeal of any­one, includ­ing the Ortho­dox, but it boils down to Truth.
If Jesus “is Truth” as He claims, we need to get Him right. If we get Him wrong, we get EVERYTHING wrong. Sober­ing stuff.

I’ve never writ­ten any­thing about the Greek Ortho­dox reli­gion, let alone tear it up and spit it out. Why do ye per­se­cute the Mormons?

Garry,
Please write about the Ortho­dox Church (Greek Ortho­dox is only one arch­dioscese. I’m actu­ally part of the Anti­ochian Ortho­dox church, but it’s all one big happy fam­ily, so if you research Greek or Russ­ian Ortho­dox, you’ll still have the right church). You can do exactly what I did with the Mor­mon church, which is to say:
* exam­ine its beliefs
* hold it account­able for its claims
* fact-check the words of its found­ing fathers
* exam­ine its history

You could start <a rel=“nofollow” href=“http://www.oca.org/OCIndex.asp?SID=2&quot; rel=“nofollow”>here or <a rel=“nofollow” href=“http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article7051.asp&quot; rel=“nofollow”>here or <a rel=“nofollow” href=“http://www.this-side-of-glory.com/orthodoxy/&quot; rel=“nofollow”>here.

You might find out inter­est­ing things. As I said to you back <a rel=“nofollow” href=“http://www.this-side-of-glory.com/archives/mormon-in-the-house/#comment-7115&quot; rel=“nofollow”>here, the church that Joseph Smith said had been in apos­tasy since the death of the apos­tles is alive now and always has been.

I don’t think I’m per­se­cut­ing any­one. I am try­ing to get to the root of what Mor­mons believe, and I’m con­trast­ing that with the beliefs that Chris­tians have always held to.

Today in our church cal­en­dar we com­mem­o­rate of the First Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, when 318 church fathers from the known world gath­ered to deal with a heresy and come up with a com­mon creed for all Chris­tians. The year was 325, and the result was the Nicene Creed, which Chris­tians have used ever since to estab­lish what does and does not meet the mark of true Chris­tian­ity. That Mor­mons can not pass that test says all that needs to be said. In short, I’m not per­se­cut­ing your church — it per­se­cutes itself.

As s-p said above, it’s all about the Truth.

Garry & Grace — it looks to me like Garry may be offended because the Mor­mon faith has been com­pared to his­toric Chris­tian­ity and it is not the same. Since it is not the same, then the Mor­mon faith can­not be legit­i­mately called “Chris­t­ian” in the tra­di­tional sense. Has Garry’s life been changed by it and is he now a bet­ter per­son because of it? Accord­ing to his posts, I truly think he has, so just because Mor­monism is not tra­di­tion­ally “Chris­t­ian” in no way negates his life-changing expe­ri­ences. There are many peo­ple whose lives have been changed for the bet­ter through other religions.

How­ever, if Garry is offended because he rec­og­nizes that Mor­monism does not com­pare favor­ably with Ortho­doxy, then per­haps he instinc­tively rec­og­nizes the truth and is uncom­fort­able with the fact he is not a part of it. Not to say God doesn’t change peo­ple out­side the Ortho­dox Church, He cer­tainly does, but as stated above, if it is the Truth you seek, then it is in Ortho­doxy where you will find your home.

While it is com­mend­able that Garry has become a bet­ter per­son, it is all for naught if he does not accept the Truth, for there is no sal­va­tion out­side of the Church.

Dean, I totally agree, but as you know, God can­not be nar­rowly defined, and Garry’s expe­ri­ences may be lead­ing him up to this beau­ti­ful moment when he rec­og­nizes that the Church, the Body of Christ, is his sal­va­tion — but, like us all, he is only respon­si­ble for what he knows — now that he knows of the Church, the bar has been raised for him (see Romans chap­ters 1 and 2).

Garry,
This com­ment thread was get­ting too long and unwieldy, so I posted your last com­ment as another blog entry along with my answer.

Mary-Leah, I defi­natly agree with you when you say, “Remem­ber, though that in Ortho­doxy a teach­ing must be con­sid­ered Ortho­dox by every­one, not some one off goofy priest of a the­olo­gion who goes the wrong way like Bul­gakov appar­ently did, he doesn’t speak for Ortho­doxy, no one man does.“
But you all shoudl remem­ber that this applies to Mor­monism as well. So even though you quote a Mor­mon source, a Mor­mon Leader, or even Joseph Smith, that does not make it Mor­mon Doctorin.

A good exam­ple is, “10 — “Jesus was the bride­groom at the mar­riage of Cana– we say it was Jesus Christ who was mar­ried, to be brought into rela­tion whereby he could see his seed.” Orson Hyde, Jour­nal of Dis­courses, vol 2, pg. 82.“
This is not taught by the church.

Iron­icly even being in the book Mormin Doc­torin doesn’t make it Mor­mon Doc­torin. Bruce R. McConkie the books author, while he is a was a well know mem­ber of the 12 apos­tles, is often crit­i­cized for many assump­tions that he’d drawn.

I can see how this would make it hard to pin down just what Offi­cial Mor­mon Doc­torin is, but if any of you are inter­ested, please com­ment back with your address, and I’ll gladly send some LDS mis­sion­ar­ies to your house to edu­cate you. I used to be one and am sure they would be happy to have the oppor­tu­nity not to try to con­vert you, but to share with you our beau­ti­ful faith.

Dave men­tions right­fully that LDS do not gen­er­ally adhere to what is in the Jour­nal of Dis­courses. How­ever, the prob­lem is that at one point, many mor­mons did believe this stuff. The fact that the Jesus/Cana con­fu­sion or the Adam=God the­ory could even be annun­ci­ated and then actu­ally com­mit­ted to print, speaks to the incred­i­ble doc­tri­nal con­fu­sion of the early Mor­mon lead­ers. The fact that this stuff was actu­ally taught by their “prophets” and “rev­e­la­tors” is all the more embarass­ing. They never answer the ques­tion, other than to admit that these doc­trines were “of men”, not of God.

Really, the whole Jour­nal of Dis­courses is the record of an incred­i­blly con­fused Amer­i­can sect, spec­u­lat­ing and teach­ing stuff in com­plete iso­la­tion from any real crit­i­cism or schol­ar­ship. Once peo­ple in Utah did col­lide with the mod­ern age, nearly all that stuff had to be thrown in the garbage. I don’t think mod­ern LDS read ANY of the JofD at all.

Mor­mons get irri­tated when we crit­i­cize their ori­gins, his­tory and beliefs. And yet they believe that all other churches have fallen into apos­tasy. Turn about is fair play, friends. It’s not per­se­cu­tion, it’s called honesty.

Some of the most damn­ing and embarass­ing mate­r­ial is on their apolo­getic web­sites: FARMS and FAIR. Some really goofy stuff. They read a lot like the young earth­ers and such like. There is a tremen­dous drop in num­bers of con­ver­sions, growth over­all has slowed way down.

Steve,
Thanks for some very inter­est­ing per­spec­tive. I hate to keep talk­ing about these things with­out get­ting some idea of how things look on the inside, but it’s so nearly impos­si­ble for Mor­mons not to start pros­e­ly­tiz­ing or blow­ing smoke under these circumstances.

I had won­dered about that com­ment of Dave’s a lit­tle bit. He cer­tainly would know more than I do about whether that belief is cur­rent or not, but how is it that they EVER had peo­ple com­ing up with things like that only to be dis­missed later on? We don’t, for exam­ple, say in an off­hand way, “Oh yeah, St. Anthony the Great believed that the Lord and Lazarus were the same per­son, but we’ve decided we don’t think that any­more. No big­gie.” It does give one the impres­sion, as you say, of peo­ple off on their own mak­ing up things as the mood strikes them. Not a stun­ning endorse­ment, par­tic­u­larly when the church has to keep “chang­ing its mind” on doc­trine. (I went to the site of a for­mer Mor­mon who told the story of his rift with the church. It started over that Adam=God doc­trine and the sub­se­quent denial of it, when the man could doc­u­ment its evi­dence com­pletely. It made him doubt that they were being as com­pletely hon­est and com­pletely inspired as they had taught him, and once he doubted that, the whole belief sys­tem fell apart.)

Inter­est­ing also to hear about the num­bers. The num­ber given for their Amer­i­can mem­ber­ship was, I believe, 24 mil­lion. Yet http://www.adherents.com gives the num­ber of their world­wide mem­ber­ship as 12 mil­lion. There may be some rea­son for the dis­crep­ancy. But any­way, I believe even they would con­cede they haven’t made the global impact that they were hop­ing for. The LDS are likely to stay a par­tic­u­larly Amer­i­can sect.