Anyone following this – and there may be no one of course – will see that, while I have appealed to both biblical and Mormon authorities, James’ end of the discussion has been marked by speculations, maybes, could have beens etc. The absence of “official” and authoritative Mormon commentary speaks volumes here. Of course, I would expect to enter into a discussion of “Mormonism and the Bible” based on Moroni 8:18 and not a discussion of James’ unorthodox -even by Mormon standards – views. Three points I want to pick up on.

1. It is typical for a Mormon to cry foul when their Christian credentials are called into question. In the spirit of the age they will insist it simply isn’t Christian, isn’t “nice” to treat anyone else as anything but equal. “How dare you”, they say, “presume that your position is any better or more worthy than mine?” They presume that since they assume it others must accept it. That is a bit rich coming from someone who insists their church alone has authority and authenticity on their side. But there is more to it than that.

2. The Christian Church has been around continuously for 2 thousand years and from the pew to the pulpit, from the small group study to the academy, from early councils to the latest church plant and evangelistic outreach Christians have hammered out, defined and defended the truth. With some 2.2 billion plus Christians in the world of course there is going to be disagreement but it is remarkable how settled core doctrines are as a result of centuries of deliberation, prayer and sacrifice.

Mormonism is strange in the extreme when compared with the carefully and prayerfully preserved teachings of the Christian Church and it is for Mormonism to prove its bona fides in the arena of faith. The Christian Church established its credentials long ago and needn’t feel the need to apologise for rejecting heresy and error.

3. Finally, in light of the above, the Bible makes clear that God is God “from eternity to eternity” (Ps.90:2) and the Book of Mormon agrees – at least in respect of Mormoni’s words in Moroni 8:18. This simple statement, by its very nature, describes a God who stands outside time. The only way then you can make God an exalted man subject to time is to redefine the words of Scripture, indeed the language as a whole to fit in with Mormon preconceptions. Typically, that is what James has set out to do, perhaps without realising himself what he has been doing.

I am not a dogmatic literalist and I understand the nuances in language but where the language is so plain and the issues so universally settled it is surely not wrong to agree that what the Bible says the Bible means. Of course, our experience of Mormonism is that what Mormonism says today it may well not say tomorow. One can’t help but feel sympathy for the way this must mess with people’s heads.

The Bible is God’s written word and is fully reliable, giving us all that we need for life and godliness. Anything that comes after must be brought before this judgement bar and if found wanting rejected. Clearly, James doesn’t believe what the Bible tells him, nor indeed what Moroni 8:18 tells him. This not according to this opinion or that but according to what the Bible tells us all.

Also, I feel that this public venue has been very helpful to me as I transition out of the LDS church and embrace the Grace of Christ. Thanks to all who participate! I’ve learned TONS on both sides. I’m thankful for the Lord leading me out of the confusion that is Mormonism. Things make sense now.

Hopefully everyday Mormons who are questioning are coming here. I’m sure they will learn a ton of stuff about Mormonism that they have never heard before. Things that will help them see that the religion they are in is so much more “out there” than they realized. At least that is what has happened to me from participating on Bobby’s blog. Mormonism has strayed so far from the simple truth that is in Christ. Why would anyone want to muddle up their lives with so much “stuff”?

Please, don’t flatter yourself. My reason for wanting to bow out of the discussion has nothing to do with it being “too involved” as you’ve falsely claimed it is. And, it has nothing to do with your “robust” response or because I’ve “run out of answers”. You are fooling yourself if you think this has anything to do with the strength of your arguments.

I stated precisely why I want to end the conversation, and I’d appreciate it if you’d refrain from trying to read my mind and attributing other reasons to my choice. What I said was that we are beating this to death. We are to the point that we are simply repeating things we’ve already said before. I think we are at an impasse. This is becoming a waste of time. I think you have poor arguments, and you think the same of my arguments. Under these circumstances we aren’t likely to get much further, especially with the tone this discussion has taken.

That leads me to my next point. Discussions like this in a public venue are rarely all that productive. The debate inevitably devolves into a competition for witty soundbites and for getting in the last word. Lou Midgley wrote,

“We may also make the mistake of not really desiring to understand the opinions of the Other. One reason for this is that debates take place before real or imagined audiences and hence in a kind of theater in which points are scored or awarded. The “winner” in a debate often succeeds by the crafty use of rhetoric. The goal easily becomes winning or appearing to win a contest. Clever, quick, confident responses are at a premium in such exchanges. And often biased, poorly informed audiences serve as the judge and presumably determine a winner.”

End quote.

Audiences, whether real or imagined, have a way of destroying true dialogue. We act differently before an audience than we would in a private conversation. We are now trying to beat each other into submission rather than have respectful dialogue. And so for this reason I’ve invited anyone who is still interested to email me so that we can discuss it in private. A truly productive conversation can be had that way. You, Mike, are invited to do the same as well. I’m not trying to control the conversation or any such nonsense you are accuse me of doing, I’m simply trying to turn the vitriol down.

I also object to your caricature of Joseph Smith. That is the sort of thing I’m talking about. I tend to doubt that you would have made such a needless (and false) remark if we were amicably discussing these issues in private.

Finally, I want to correct something else you’ve accused Mormons of. We do not have “disdain for those who have gone before, seeking truth and sacrificing even their lives to maintain it…”. That accusation is rather offensive to me. I, and all Mormons, have enormous respect for those icons of Christianity who have battled for truth. At the least, we see them as important contributors to the effort of paving the way for the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the latter days.

Thanks for participating in this discussion Mike. I only wish we could have maintained a more friendly tone. I’m sure you will respond, and I urge those who are interested to email me for my response.

Sincerely,
James

I am disappointed though not at all surprised at your decision to bow out of this discussion. You were happy enough to lecture everyone at length as long as you thought you had a handle on this but once you come across a robust response and run out of answers you excuse yourself with “this is too involved” and an invitation to anyone who is interested to email you. You make a habit of this don’t you?

Clearly you want to have your own private audience that you can influence as you see fit. But this is and always has been a public discussion and I will leave it to others to decide why you are withdrawing and why you are so keen to talk to people alone. I say it is foul play on your part and stand prepared to continue this discussion when you are.

It is not a question of having cornered the market but, yes, I do speak and write as though these are settled issues because they are and have been for centuries and it is a lie to suggest otherwise. Just because you can drag up some dissensious characters who see things differently makes no real difference. They have been there from the beginning but it doesn’t mean anything.

Only groups like Mormons who want to reinvent Christianity in Joseph Smith’s own image seek to make these issues controversial. I don’t see why a polytheistic treasure-seeking polygamist who died in a gun fight and who has not more than 5 million active followers across the world should dictate to us what we should do with two millennia of teaching. The Mormon disdain for those who have gone before, seeking truth and sacrificing even their lives to maintain it is both distressing and rather ridiculous.

I will respond to your points if only to clarify for whoever might be following this those things you seem determined to obfuscate. If at some point you wish to come back to this then by all means jump in.

I’m going to leave just a few thoughts, because I think we are beating this to death. I’m going to basically address your comments in the order that you’ve made them. After this I’ll let you have the last word if you want. Anyone interested can email me if they want to carry on the discussion ([email protected]).

(1) I think you are continuing to conflate “man” with “fallen man”. Man by definition is not fallen. That is why “fallen” is a qualifier for a certain type of man. I think I showed that sufficiently in my last post. So by positing that God is a man I am not positing that God is a fallen man who is sinful.

(2) All this talk about dictionaries is simply silly. I have no argument with you about dictionary definitions. But, I do think there is truth in Humpty-Dumpty’s dictum.

(3) You said, “Mormonism is mistaken in blurring the distinctions between God and man while the Bible is very clear and quite unequivocal in portraying God as holy and distinct from his creation and Man as part of God’s creation.”

Of course, this invites a discussion about whether your interpretation of the Bible is correct or not. I think I can interpret it better than you, while you obviously think the opposite. Perhaps another time and place we can do that.

(4) On my comments about Balaam, see #1 above. God says to Balaam “I am not a man”, but the clear message is “I am not a fallen man”. I think it is pretty obvious, especially since God (Jesus) is in fact a man.

(5) On the issue of Moroni 8:18 and Psalm 90:2, you’ve accused of doing nothing more than describing Mormonism. Of course, I think that you are guilty of the same. I think you are simply reading it through the lens of hellenistic Trinitariansim. I think I’m making an effort to read it through the lens of ancient Israel.

(6) You’ve quoted a number of passages about God, particularly about the creation. That invites an enormous debate, one we might have sometime. I’m especially interested in Genesis 1:1. I wonder, are you familiar with John Walton’s treatment of it?

(7) You next chastise me for my interpretation of God’s words to Balaam. I think you are being unfair to me there. I was simply offering the framework through which I think the passage ought to be read.

(8) I’d forgotten that you believe that God is outside of time, so I’ll retract that argument I made earlier. It would be interesting to have a discussion some time about that belief. I believe that God is subject to time.

(9) As for the statements by Babylon, I think you’ve totally missed the boat. This isn’t about whether or not Babylon was correct in her claim, or about the prideful boasting she was engaging in. This is merely about the meaning of the phrase. The idiomatic expression that Babylon and God both use has the same meaning, even if one of them uses it wickedly and one of them uses it righteously.

(10) I simply disagree with your take on Moroni 8:18, and I think I’ve made my reasons clear throughout this discussion. I happen to think that Joseph’s theology did in fact evolve, but never in a way that contradicted itself or the Bible.

(11) I’m totally fine with admitting that Joseph was wrong about some things. This just isn’t one of them.

As a final comment, I want to highlight something that I think is typical of these sorts of discussions. Many conservative protestants tend to talk about the Bible as if they were the guardians and possessors of it, and that they have cornered the market on biblical interpretation. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Evangelicals are just one more group who claims a spiritual heritage from the Bible, along with Mormons and countless others. Please keep in mind that I, and all Mormons, are sincerely striving to correctly interpret the Bible. We aren’t here to play games. We believe that it is scripture just as much as you do.

Thanks.

James

This is a fallacy because the unbeliever is beset with preconceptions of their own and the believer is quite capable of “seeing the other point of view”, or as capable as anyone can be, because they themselves have not always held the view they hold today. I know what it is to have thought differently, to have “seen” other viewpoints and to have changed my own position on the basis of my experience of God, reasoned thought and discussion. As I grow as a Christian I hold onto the hope that this will continue to happen.

It is important to realise that there is no neutral ground, no viewing gallery where one can stand apart from the mêlée and issue sounder, better judgement than those who choose to enter the arena of ideas and beliefs. In the very course of taking this illusory position of the neutral observer one is staking a claim, declaring a belief and setting oneself up as opposed to another, different position. As an unbeliever you have tacitly declared that there is no God; that is not a neutral place but a definite statement of belief that stands in opposition to the beliefs of others here. Rather than adopt the posture of a neutral wouldn’t it be better to accept that you have a view and enter the discussion on that basis?

The point about understanding ourselves through the character of God is excellently made. It gets right to the heart of what the Christian faith is about. Who and what is God and who and what are we in relation to God? The Bible makes plain and the Christian faith has consistently taught that God is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and perfect in all his character and attributes. He has always been God, will always be God and beside him there is no god. He is right in all his judgements and merciful in his dealings with fallen man.

Man is a creature, made in the image of God in that those aspects of God’s character that are “communicable attributes” are found in men and women. Man is an animal as far as his physicality is concerned and has all the instincts and character traits typical of his kind in the animal kingdom. He is born, he grows and develops eats and sleeps, breeds, rears young, grows old and dies. Yet Hamlet asks, “What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed?”

Think about the very fact that a man should ask that question, ask any question, and that another would ponder it and muse on its application. We are so used to our thinking processes we forget how incredible it is that we have them to use. Uniquely in creation man is imbued with those godlike attributes that set him apart as steward over creation, co-regent with God charged with husbanding and caring for the creation of which he is a part. Hamlet says it very well when he declares:

“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”

Man is “this quintessence of dust” and yet so much more than mere creature, “noble in reason, infinite in faculties, in form and moving express and admirable, in action like an angel, in apprehension like a god!” Man is a creature with the apprehension (or understanding) of a god. James wishes to say not that man is a creature displaying what Christians call the communicable attributes of God but that God is a man, of the same species as man, and that the creature man can be a god.

The implications are enormous and couldn’t be more serious to a believer because man is portrayed in Scripture as a creature fallen from a place of grace, subject to sin and death and in need of saving from a state from which he cannot save himself. If God is a man then implicit in that belief is the idea that God is a sinner (a contentious subject even in Mormon circles). If you were a believer would you want to put your future eternity in the hands of a reformed sinner whose judgement has obviously been questionable in the past or of a God who has always been God and who is perfect in all his ways?

And so we come to James’ convoluted reply to what is in the end a simple enough point. I have no intention of playing dictionary poker but it is important that words cannot simply mean what you want them to mean. I have looked up dictionary.com and find that it agrees with my own dictionary in that it does not give “over twenty different definitions of the word ‘nature’” and “no less than 23 different definitions of the word ‘character’.” Rather, it gives a variety of different applications of the same definition, i.e. what a thing is like. From the nature of nature to the character of a man, these words always mean those attributes that mark something or someone out from something or someone else. They address the question of what constitutes a thing. It is important to understand this and to understand that dictionaries treat the words as interchangeable.

I fear you are trying to muddy the water, James, by asserting, “aren’t dictionaries so confusing with their different definitions?” But dictionaries are not confusing and if Joseph Smith, Dallin Oaks, you or anyone else wishes to use a word it had better be used according to universally received and widely understood definitions. You cannot, with Humpty Dumpty, say, “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” The question we are addressing is the nature and character of God, meaning those things about God that mark him out as God. Mormonism is mistaken in blurring the distinctions between God and man while the Bible is very clear and quite unequivocal in portraying God as holy and distinct from his creation and Man as part of God’s creation.

On the issue of Balaam you have rushed to the familiar challenge “the general point made by Evangelical critics of Mormonism”, but that is not my point. I am not using “God is not a man” as an emphatic statement from God denying Mormonism. Rather, I am pointing out that God is not a man in that he cannot sin. It is in the very nature and character of God to be sinless. By your scheme, God cannot make such a statement because it would make him the very thing he is not – a liar. If God lived on an earth as a man and worshipped a god who sent a Saviour to that world then God is a man with the capacity for sin, which God emphatically declares he is not. God is eternally sinless, sinless by nature while man is a redeemed sinner if he turns to and trusts in Christ.

You have unpacked what you understand Joseph Smith and Dallin Oaks to mean respectively but all you have done is describe Mormonism. But Joseph Smith is not the measure of these things, the Word of God is. Moroni 8:18 is in complete accord with Ps.90:2, that declares “Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” There is that word ‘Olam’ again, meaning time out of mind, perpetual, eternal. The context, as I have pointed out, gives the application. You can wish it to mean something else but this is what the Bible says and what Christians believe.

This is in accord with Gen.1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” While all else had a beginning, before the beginning began God was there. This is the beginning of everything, matter, space and time. God is God “from everlasting to everlasting” while creation had a beginning. The worlds were not made out of any pre-existent material (Heb.11:3) because before the beginning began God alone was there and before the creation there was no other kind of existence. Creation itself was made ex nihilo, out of nothing, the Hebrew bara meaning to create in absolute terms. Man was not made ex nihilo but was made “out of the dust of the ground” (Gen.2:7), as were the other creatures (Gen.2:19).

Eph.4:6 declares that he is “One God…above all and through all, and in all”, indicating that he stands in a relationship of both transcendence and immanence to Creation. He is “above all” and “over all” (Ro.9:5) transcendent and independent of Creation. That is what the Bible means when it speaks of God. It says nothing of species, that is your word, and nothing of pre-mortal existence for man, that is a Mormon concept not found in Christianity. In the Bible man has a beginning while God does not.

Now you may wish to believe differently and that is your prerogative but you cannot make the Bible say what you choose to believe any more than you can legitimately make the dictionary define a word in a way that suits you. I find it telling that, after a lengthy peroration concluding:

“And so, in the case of Balaam, I believe that the text can correctly be understood as saying, “God is a homo sapien, but he is not in the development stage of “mortal man”. He is beyond that, and he doesn’t behave like that. Men lie and cheat, but God is not a man. He is a god. He is a more advanced form of homo sapiens.”

You then write, “of course the text doesn’t say all that…” You bet the text doesn’t say all that but you seem quite prepared to make the text say what you want it to say. You present alternative ways of looking at it but fail to see that the Bible has already stated clearly how we should understand the subject. Let me deal with the points you raise as examples to back up your argument.

I would not agree that Jehovah was not really Israel’s God before Israel existed. You can only take that view if you insist on making God a man subject to time. I cannot be my children’s father before I have children, granted, but that is because I must wait for that time when I become a father. God is not subject to time and is God “from eternity to eternity” and therefore is God of all Creation. He is God of Israel even before Israel exists because all time is an eternal now for God who “makes known the end from the beginning” (Is.46:10), who declares “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end” (Rev.21:6). You seriously mistake Scripture on this point.

Babylon may indeed declare herself the eternal queen but God shows himself to be eternal by holding the fate of Babylon in the palm of his hand. Babylon may declare of itself “I am and there is no other” but you are seriously mistaken if you understand God to be using these words in this way. You are taking the vaunting, self-regarding words of a kingdom that will, like all earthly kingdoms, pass and comparing them quite inappropriately with the truth uttered by the eternal God. One has nothing to do with the other beyond the words used, the former to express unfounded pride the latter to express eternal truth.

The whole point is that when Smith wrote Moroni 8:18 he was reflecting a view of God that would be considered orthodox in that it portrays God, correctly, as eternally God. It reflects the influences that still bore on him in his early days. When he preached his King Follett discourse he was reflecting a radical change in his view of God and demonstrating beyond question that he had changed his mind. He was not saying remotely the same thing in those two instances and attempts today to reconcile those two irreconcilable views always end with the sort of convoluted and incredibly speculative arguments you have brought here. But if you go to the Bible the question is answered clearly and unequivocally.

The problem is that Mormons are not prepared to countenance the idea that their founding prophet might have been wrong, might have contradicted himself and may have been discarding old ideas as quickly as he took up new ones. The starting point for a Christian is that the Bible is reliable and we believe whatever it tells us, the starting point for a Mormon is that Joseph Smith can’t be wrong and so there must be an explanation and, no matter how excruciatingly tortuous it is it must be better than rejecting the teachings of Joseph Smith.

(1) Introduction

Words are symbols for ideas and concepts. Obviously, many words have multiple shades of meaning and nuances. We are dealing with words that are like that. I promise you that I don’t disagree with Dallin Oaks in the least on this issue. The question is not “what does the word ‘nature’ mean?”. Instead, the question is “what do we mean by the word ‘nature’ in this particular context?” You are correct, Mike, to note that these words are sometimes interchangeable. It simply depends on what one means when they use the word.

You offered some dictionary definitions for those words. Dictionary.com has no less than 20 different definitions for the word “nature”, and no less than 23 definitions for the word “character”. So, instead of playing a game of “dictionary poker” let’s just try and determine what the words mean in the contexts of which they are spoken.

(2) King Follett Discourse & Elder Oaks

In the King Follet Discourse, Joseph Smith is recorded as saying, “But it is the simple and first principle of the gospel-to know for a certainty the character of God, that we may converse with him as one man with another. God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did, and I will show it from the Bible.” To me, this seems pretty obvious that by “character” Joseph Smith has something in mind like “species”. He is arguing against the creedal tradition which states that God is merely an unembodied spirit. Joseph Smith is stressing the fact the God the Father is what we are in the sense that he is an individual being who has I-Thou relationships with others. We can converse with him as one man converses with another because God is embodied and because he is an individual in the same sense that every man is an individual. He is not homoousios with the other members of the Godhead in the sense that they are three persons in one being. Instead, according to Mormonism, they are three persons in three beings. Joseph stresses this idea by explaining that God the Father is so much like us that he even once dwelt on an Earth as a mortal.

Why would a proper understanding of God’s species, and thus genetic relationship to us, be the first principle of the gospel? Because, as Elder Oaks explains, “the prevailing concepts of the nature of God and the Godhead were untrue and could not lead their adherents to the destiny God desired for them.” It is essentially the same issue that dominated the Nicene council. The underlying issue was salvation, and the “nature” of God was being debated (Arianism vs Trinitarianism) because they believed that the nature of God’s species was vital to man’s salvation. If Christ wasn’t fully god and fully man, so the logic went, he could not turn sinful man into glorious godly beings.

For the Latter-day Saints the issue is the same. The underlying issue though, instead of being salvation from hell (though that is at stake also), is exaltation. We are thinking about and looking towards exaltation. Exaltation is when an individual enters into an intimate friendship with God and shares all that the Father has. Joseph Smith’s point, and Elder Oaks’ point, is that in order to enter into that relationship it is important to realize that God the Father is actually God the Father. He is our Father. He is the same species that we are. He is a “man” in the sense that he is a more developed form of human being. I like the phrase, “Divinity is the full maturity of humanity.” God is a human being who is fully mature in his development.

I agree with that. I agree with Elder Oaks, who is taking his cue from Joseph Smith. Understanding that God the Father is ultimately the same species as us helps us to develop the friendship with God (exaltation) that we seek.

So what about my earlier distinction between “nature” and “character”? I was just trying to point out that the record shows Joseph saying “character” and not “nature”. That doesn’t really matter as long as we figure out what he means by the word. In context, it seems to refer to God’s species as being fundamentally the same as our species.

(3) God and Balaam

You’ve brought up the case of Balaam. I’ve seen this brought up on other occasions by Evangelicals as well. You are exactly correct when you say that “man” is used as a byword for “dishonest” in Num 23:19. The general point made by Evangelical critics of Mormonism is something about how Mormons believe God is a man and so this passage contradicts Mormonism. But this criticism fails on several levels.

First, according to the Hypostatic Union, God in fact is a man. Well, at least God the Son is a man. He is fully man. Yet, even though God the Son is fully man he is not considered to be inherently dishonest or sinful. This is at least one example of a man who is not dishonest.

Secondly, the belief that man is naturally dishonest and sinful stems from a belief in original sin. The thinking goes that Adam fell and with his fall he brought about a stain of dishonesty and wickedness that plagues all his descendants. But what about before Adam fell? Was Adam inherently dishonest and wicked then? No. He was not. Nevertheless, Adam was still a man. Adam was a man who was not inherently dishonest.

Third, what about when believers are resurrected? They will dwell in heaven where there is no dishonesty or wickedness. Are they still men? That depends on how you define the word. For me, and I think most Mormons, we consider resurrected, righteous beings to be still be “men” in the sense that they are the same fundamental species as they were while in mortality. They have overcome (through Christ) the struggles of mortality and no longer are plagued by death and sin. Nevertheless they are still “men”.

That is the sense in which Mormons consider God to be a “man”. He is the same fundamental species as us. We have already seen that the word “man” does not have to be equated to someone who is dishonest or sinful. But, in the case of typical mortal men, it does. When Mormons refer to god as a “man” we mean it in a similar way to Evangelicals who say that Jesus is fully man. He is a man, but he isn’t plagued by death and sin.

A useful analogy for understanding this issue is to consider the relationship between a caterpillar and a butterfly. At random, let’s choose the species Parnassius epaphus (there are millions of species we could choose). Mortal man is analogous to the caterpillar stage of Parnassius epapus. God the Father is analogous to the butterfly stage of Parnassius epaphus. But, both mortal man and God the Father are members of the same species, and are analogous to the caterpillar and butterfly stages of Parnassius epaphus. Now, leaving our analogy, God and man are two different developmental stages of the species homo sapien. In the King Follett Discourse Joseph Smith is basically declaring that God the Father is a the same species as us. God the Father is a homo sapien, and as such we can converse with him face to face.

And so, in the case of Balaam, I believe that the text can correctly be understood as saying, “God is a homo sapien, but he is not in the development stage of “mortal man”. He is beyond that, and he doesn’t behave like that. Men lie and cheat, but God is not a man. He is a god. He is a more advanced form of homo sapien.”

Obviously the text doesn’t say all that, but that is how it can be understood. I’m not arguing that the ancient Israelites understood God in the same way that modern Mormons do, but I do believe their understanding was closer to Mormonism than it was to Trinitarianism. That is a debate for another day.

(4) Moroni 8:18

We’ve wandered quite a bit from our initial discussion of Moroni 8:18. But I guess it goes to show how important and influential our respective views of God and his relationship to man are in our interpretation of scripture. Mike said, “In insisting that God was once a man a Mormon is denying God’s eternal nature and character as described in Moroni 8:18 and related Bible passages.” We simply don’t see it that way. There are two ways of interpreting God’s mortality, and I’m sort of defending both of them simultaneously:

(a) The first view is to believe that God the Father was a mortal on an Earth, but that he never sinned. This would be roughly analogous to what Christ did. As was demonstrated above, to be a “man” does not necessarily mean that one is sinful. Christ was a man who was not sinful. Adam was a man who was not sinful by nature before his fall. In insisting that God was once a man we are not denying God’s unchangeable character.

(b) The second view is to believe that God the Father was a mortal on an Earth and that during that time he did sin. Under this idea, God the Father repented and was redeemed and is now a perfect being with all that past behind him and being irrelevant to his ability to love and save mankind. Under this idea, the meaning of “eternity” becomes a small issue, as we’ve already begun to discuss. We’ve begun debating the meaning of “olam” in Hebrew. You have correctly pointed out that each use of “olam” ought to be evaluated by its context. You’ve shown some good examples of where “olam” clearly does not describe an actual infinite period of time. But, you’ve tried to argue that when it speaks about God it must take the meaning of an infinite period of time. Your supporting passages are both very questionable.

Zechariah 1:5 simply contrasts the limited duration of an Israelite prophet to Jehovah’s unlimited (eternal) duration as Israel’s god. But even you would agree that Jehovah was not really Israel’s god before Israel itself existed. I don’t see anything there that would indicate that the word “olam” has to mean an infinite past.

Isaiah 47:7 has Babylon declaring herself to be the “eternal queen”, but there is no evidence that Babylon actually views herself as having been the supreme city for an infinite period of time in the past. It is simply absurd to suggest that the citizens of Babylon actually believed that about their city. Rather, the claim to being the “eternal queen” is idiomatic boasting, much like their claim in verse 8 that “I am, and there is none beside me.” The reality is that there actually are other cities besides Babylon, but it is idiomatic boasting to declare oneself to be the only city in existence.

Rather than “olam” taking the meaning of an infinite past whenever it is applied to God in the Hebrew scriptures, I think you are imposing that meaning on the text based on your Trinitarian assumptions. The text doesn’t demand that reading, and doesn’t teach it. The word “olam” is a strange word that doesn’t really fit either Evangelical or Mormon beliefs, but neither should it cause problems for those two traditions.

James