Orson Pratt on popular Christianity

 

“…we would inform the Catholics, that the Church of Christ has not ceased to exist, neither has Peter ceased his existence, but both the Church and Peter are in heaven, far out of the reach of the gates of hell, and far out of the reach of the abominable soul-destroying impositions of popery. “The gates of hell have prevailed and will continue to prevail over the Catholic mother of harlots, and over all her Protestant daughters; but as for the apostolical Church of Christ, she rests secure in the mansion of eternal happiness, where she will remain until the apostate Catholic church, with all her popes and bishops, together with all her harlot daughters shall be hurled down to hell; then it shall be said,… he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication…” (Orson Pratt, Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon, No. 3, 44).

Oliver Cowdery ltr M&A 1 (Nov 1834)

TO W. A. COWDERY, Esq.

DEAR BROTHER:

I have received, of late, several communications from you, containing several questions. Not long since, you wished me to express my mind, either publicly or privately, upon a few remarks of the Savior, as recorded in Mat. 16:16, 17 & 18—

“And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

It is plain that the Savior never did nor never will build his church upon any other foundation, or sustain it upon any other principle, than he there represents to Peter, viz:—of revelation from the Father that he was the Christ. Erect a church upon any other foundation and when the storm comes it must fall. And the only reason why his church was not always on earth, is, that men ceased to obtain revelations from heaven. And the only reason why they were deceived in time past, and will be in the last days, is because they do not know that Jesus is the Christ!

Men say they believe that Jesus is the Christ; but the Lord said to Peter that the Father had revealed it to him, and upon that Rock he would build his church and the gates of hell should not prevail against it. For if men know that Jesus is the Christ, it must be by revelation. To be sure, we may say, that the apostles testify of him, and that we believe they tell us the truth; but will this save a people from destruction, when the cunning arguments of the adversary are leveled as a mighty shaft to shake man from the foundation? No; he must have an assurance. The salvation of man is of that importance that he is not left to a mere belief, founded upon the testimony or say-so of another man!

No; flesh and blood cannot reveal it—it must be the Father: and query: If the everlasting Father reveals to men that Jesus is the Son of God, can they be overthrown? Can floods or flames, principalities or powers; things present or to come; heights or depths, swerve them from the foundation—the ROCK? No; said our Lord, the gates of hell cannot prevail! There is an assurance in the things of God that cannot be obliterated! There is a certainty accompanying HIS divine communications which enables the mind to soar aloft, and contemplate—not only contemplate, but mingle with the blessed in the blessed mansions, where all things are pure! It is this, then, which constitutes a certainty.

There can be no doubt but that the true church did exist after the Lord’s ascension; but the query is, how shall we reconcile this point, when we say that it did not exist on earth for a number of centuries, and yet say that the gates of hell did not prevail against it? To the answer:

You will see above, that I have plainly contended that the gates of hell could not prevail against a man or society of men while they hold communion and intercourse with heaven.

I will now suppose a case, or propose a question: If Elijah had been the only individual on earth who kept the commandments of the Lord, he would have been all the church then upon earth. And you know that any and every people ceasing to keep his commandments, are disowned by him. If these points are admitted, I proceed:

When Elijah was taken up to heaven, did the gates of hell prevail against the church of God? Did they overcome the holy priesthood? No; neither.—Had Elijah been the last righteous man, and his enemies prevailed over his natural body, and put him to death, would the gates of hell have prevailed against the church? No; the holy priesthood would have been taken to God, and the gates of hell would have been as unsuccessful as in the case of his translation.

[Eph 4:11–13] In the church, said Paul, God has placed apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, miracles, gifts of healings, helps, governments, and diversities of tongues; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. But did that church exist? Are the fruits of that priesthood now to be found, or have they been among men from the apostles to the present? Where are the individuals who will pretend that this has been the case? And yet they say that Christ’s church has continued on earth, and that the gates of hell have not prevailed against it! Here seems to be a trouble—To admit that the authority of administering ordinances, on earth, has been taken away, would admit, at once, that they have no authority. This places men under the necessity of saying, that the church of God has and does exist, in all these variegated forms and colors, scattered over the world—No more resembling the ancient church, than the ancient church does that of the Hindus.

It is revelation which constitutes the church of Christ; for this was the declaration to Peter, that the Father had revealed to him, and upon that principle his church should exist. Show me any other, and I confess that you will show me a something, the pattern of which I have not found in the holy scriptures, as coming from heaven!

You will begin to see my mind upon this matter. It is, that when men ceased to bring forth the fruits of the kingdom of God on earth, it ceased to exist on earth; and when it ceased to exist on earth, he took the authority to himself, and with it the holy priesthood. The gates of hell did not prevail against the church of God; and the decree of our Father is, that they shall not; but no man will pretend, (if he does it is in vain,) that the pure church, as existed in the days of Paul, and for a length of time afterward, has continued. If so, according to his theory; the gates of hell have prevailed against it; for he cannot trace its existence here. He may trace a supposed authority through a succession of Popes and bishops; but if the authority was there, where is and where was the fruit?

If we look into the 12th chapter of John’s Revelation [Rev. 12] on Patmos, we shall see the church represented in a striking figure, so plainly shown to be taken from the earth, that it is impossible his beautiful vision should be misunderstood.—Editor.

(Messenger and Advocate I.2:26 ¶1–27 ¶6)

Open theism

 

Kirk Rollins

@nicoraytruth

I think a growing theological problem in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is that members are taking on the Nicene God without taking on the Nicene council. They want the God of Nicaea without Nicaea. It’s a byproduct of their desire to be “mainstream” and not “peculiar”. You hear it whenever a member insists that God knows every outcome in advance and could cure any child of cancer with a word, but simply chooses not to. That is Augustine’s God, not Joseph’s. The God of the Restoration exists within time, is an exalted being who instituted the eternal laws, and is bound by them. Alma said it plainly: if he broke them, he would cease to be God. And this matters more than almost anything else we argue about, because Augustine’s God, the creedal one, has no answer for that child struck with cancer, but Joseph’s does. Augustine’s God created everything from nothing. He wrote the laws of biology, knew before the first atom existed which children would get cancer, and can suspend any of it at any moment at no cost to himself. So every dead child was either decreed or permitted by a being who could have done otherwise for free. Augustine spent his life trying to talk his way out of that. Joseph reveal a different deity. Matter is eternal and was organized, not spoken into existence (D&C 93:33). Intelligence was never created and cannot be (D&C 93:29). Agency is not a privilege God hands out but the grain of being itself, otherwise there is no existence (D&C 93:30). Law was irrevocably decreed before the foundation of the world (D&C 130:20). God is an exalted being who lives within time, works within that law, and is bound by it That God is not choosing to let a child die. He is working inside a world of real agents and real matter running on real law, a world he did not build with cancer in it, and he is doing everything the law allows. That is why Enoch watched him weep (Moses 7:28). Augustine’s God cannot weep. Impassibility forbids it. A God who cannot be hurt by what happens to you never has to answer for it. Joseph’s God weeps because he is inside the same story you are. In Augustine’s world a child’s cancer was decreed or permitted. In Joseph’s world it is grieved, shared, and one day undone. When LDS members start arguing for exhaustive foreknowledge and a God who could fix anything at will, they are not defending the Restoration. They are handing back the one problem Joseph actually solved, and they inherit Augustine’s silence at the graveside along with it.

Stephanie Morgan

@FreedomMomUSA

·

2h

I know you believe in miracles. Tell me what do you think of miracles of healing? How do they happen? Do they happen because of faith? Gods will? Both? — I believe he can heal, that he can save, because of the number of times I have seen him heal and save miraculously. This tells me he can intervene, but it also is true that he doesn’t always, and overall it’s rare from my earthly view. — what is your belief as to how this squares with what you wrote. BTW: I believe God works within natural law, that there are laws he cannot break, laws he will not break, and that this limits him in so far as we are talking about doing things that would break apart the reality we live in and the ultimate purposes of existence and his plan.

Kirk Rollins

@nicoraytruth

·

1h

What I personally believe? miracles are dynamic, real time divine responses to human agency rather than pre scripted events playing out on an unalterable timeline. That’s all. I have no further explanations. I wish I had a better answer.

TylerRJ

@TylerRJ2

·

2h

There is a lot here but yes to a lot of it. We need to have a space about this with a lot of the lds apologist. But this has been discussed quite a bit on some podcasts in the past.

@ThoughtfulSaint

had a long thread on open theism that was really interesting. Some really good arguments from LDS in both firewood the open versus exhaustive. Was fascinating!

Kirk Rollins

@nicoraytruth

·

1h

I am replacing

@ThoughtfulSaint

as chief LDS apologist. It wasn’t my decision, but the people demanded it.

Random Rationality

@RandomRation

·

1h

You are right , and I think Ex nihilo is the load bearing error. Creation-from-nothing solidified in Christian thought around Tatian, ~200 A.D. If God invents you out of nothing, or out of His own mind/imagination…then every act you ever perform is the script He wrote before you existed. I have called that a form of panentheism: creatures as extensions of God’s mind acted out in a world He imagined. - If He did not want a given person in hell, or a given rape to occur, He could have created that person differently, placed them elsewhere, or not created them. -Calvinism is that logic made honest: nobody can do anything about their fate except God. The LDS religion has “the best take on free agency… largely because of the rejection of ex nihilo creation. Foreknowledge is not as much of a problem by itself. Foreknowledge plus “I invented you from nothing and could have invented you otherwise at no cost” is the poison. Joseph Smith taught something different, “how did a flawed nature happen?” As you already quoted, “Intelligence / light of truth was not created and cannot be (D&C 93:29). “Man was also in the beginning with God.” Intelligence already acts. “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence” (D&C 93:30). No agency, no existence. Parley P. Pratt said each person is “an individual intelligence, an agent endowed with life, with a degree of independence, or inherent will.” Joseph said, God found Himself “in the midst of spirits and glory,” and because He was more intelligent, God created us spiritually before physically upon the face of the Earth. God raised us in a spiritual family before offering mortality. God instituted laws so the rest of us could learn God’s divine nature, voluntary self sacrifice, and God instructed the weaker intelligences and instituted the plan of salvation. LDS understand that the core of a person is not a thought God had. It is an uncreated actor God found and then offered a path. It seems that even the transition from intelligence to spirit child is voluntary. At some point each intelligence is organized as a spirit child of Heavenly Parents. Joseph Smith said the organization of spiritual beings was “agreeable to the most perfect order and harmony… their limits and bounds were fixed irrevocably, and voluntarily subscribed to by themselves.” The theory is that the move from eternal intelligence to spirit child is something each intelligence accepts, not something imposed on a blank. Spirit children were never identical. Abraham 3 says some intelligences are more intelligent than others and have no beginning. Jehovah is “more intelligent than they all”. Jesus was. Firstborn not merely by clock time but as the Father’s chosen heir because of that superiority. He is the one who said, “Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.” Agency was already real in that estate.