Entry for January 05, 2008

Finally typed the quote I liked the most. Like I mentioned, he spends about 300 pages breaking down assumptions of the classic trinity and the completes on this chapter.

Quote:

Chapter 14 A Mormon Christology Mormonism’s distinctive understanding of God derives from its commitment that Jesus the Christ is the preeminent revelation both of what God is and what humans are. Mormonism takes Jesus as the model of what it means to be truly and fully human and truly and fully divine. We take it for granted that we know what it is to be human even thought we rarely realize our full humanity. Insuperable problems for Christology are created by the conventional belief which posits an ontological dichotomy between the Creator and the created which can never be bridged no matter how much progress humans make. Mormonism’s belief that Godhood and humanity form a continuum—that divinity is fully mature humanity—allows it to avoid the most intractable logical problems confronting Christology. Mormonism’s commitment that Jesus experienced mortality in the same way that humans do—by leaving and temporarily forgetting his exalted, preexistent status while growing in mortality from grace to grace and confronting genuine temptations in concrete situations, experiencing both pleasure and pain as a necessary condition to gain experiential knowledge – helps it to confront the historical problem. Mormonism’s unique contribution to Christology arises from its redefinition what properties are essential to divinity and which are essential to full humanity, for it is only such a redefinition that allows the logical problem to be coherently addressed. Although Mormon scripture, like Judeo-Christian scripture in general, is precritical in its approach and understanding of who and what Jesus is or was, it more directly addresses the issue of Christology than the New Testament writings. The Mormon scriptures expressly grapple with the problem entailed in asserting that “God became a man,” an assertion not found in the Old or New Testaments. Indeed it is doubtful that the Judeo-Christian scripture asserts that Jesus Christ is God in the same sense that the Father is God. I am not asserting that the Mormon scripture addresses either the historical or logical problems elucidated above—indeed, the scriptures reveal little awareness of the historical and logical problems on which I have chosen to focus. Nevertheless, Mormon scripture develops a Christology beginning with the Book of Mormon, at least in seed, which follows an identifiable trajectory through the Nauvoo period. I thin it is fair to say that the distinctive Mormon view of God is a result of its understanding that Jesus of Nazareth is a revelation of the nature of both God and man.