Comments on: The Promethean Comedy

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 05:14:51 +0000

“Fair enough, Ben. But I think that as Mormons we can really overblow the distinction between us and traditional Christianity sometimes.”

Interesting perspective and I’m glad I noticed it today because I was thinking about a scripture we read in sunday school:
DC 130:19 And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come…
…22 The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.

I know that this section is really just a compilation of revelator items and that’s why there seems to be a disconnect between verses 18-21 and 22 – end… But I wonder if the placement was perhaps not so random and that perhaps the very concept in v. 22 provides a foundation and/or reference point for all the “knowledge” (insert: truth) we will gain during mortality. If that is true (and it’s just a theory I am floating) could there be any greater gap between Mormonism and mainstream Christianity? I might suggest that someone would be hard-pressed to ever over-emphasize this gap. Just a thought…

By: Adam Greenwood

Adam Greenwood — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 01:57:05 +0000

” But I think that as Mormons we can really overblow the distinction between us and traditional Christianity sometimes. . . . A Mormon and a Baptist can read Romans and embrace its teaching while a Pagan, Confucian, Hindu or a Muslim would find Paul’s message bewildering or disgusting. In most of our heterodox views we are basically on the wrong side of a debate that was already there within Christianity. ”

Right, right, right, right. The Father didn’t pick Joseph because he was a blank slate that he could write anything on. He picked him because Joseph was naive enough to ask if a lot of scriptural teaching should be taken at face value.

Of course, this cuts both ways. Mormons overemphasize our distance sometimes, and so do Nicean Christians. People will tell me how unsettling is our doctrine that God is a man and I think, “you ever heard of the Incarnation? And if you have, did you think it was a tributary of the Nile?”

By: Miranda PJ

Miranda PJ — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 08:09:46 +0000

Nice post, Nate. There’s something vaguely hedonistic about your affection for failure. It gives expression to a certain sense of belonging in this failed-Promethean, post-Edan, fallen state. We all feel this odd sense of belonging in one form or another. Perhaps that’s why it took so long to get the story right.

By: Jeremiah J.

Jeremiah J. — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 22:23:22 +0000

Fair enough, Ben. But I think that as Mormons we can really overblow the distinction between us and traditional Christianity sometimes. That’s why I think that Nate’s comparision of Joseph Smith to Prometheus or to Greek heros is useful mainly for a kind of rhetorical effect. So yes “Promethean” in a loose, everyday sense. Same goes with the phrase “Nietzsche to me is basically a Mormon except that he didn’t know about the Book of Mormon” which one T&S blogger once said. There is a huge body of doctrine contained in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament which we basically share with the rest of the Christian world with relatively few revisions. That common Christian core sets us apart from every other ethico-religious system in world history quite radically. E.g. the Mormon view of God seems very far from the traditional Christian view. But the traditional Christian view is more anthropomorphic in the Mormon sense than any other major view out there. A Mormon and a Baptist can read Romans and embrace its teaching while a Pagan, Confucian, Hindu or a Muslim would find Paul’s message bewildering or disgusting. In most of our heterodox views we are basically on the wrong side of a debate that was already there within Christianity.

By: Ben H

Ben H — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 06:16:55 +0000

I completely agree with your reading of the story of the rival plans, Jeremy, but it is worth noting that the account in Abraham: “I will send the first”, makes it sound as though there were simply two plans, and God picked one. You have to bring in other scriptural passages (something we LDS aren’t very good at–reading in concert!) to get it clear that God had intended from the beginning that we keep our agency.

But I think Nate’s point that Christ calls us to aspire to perfection, to be as our Father in heaven is, is worthy of the name Promethean even though this, too, is Father’s intended work and glory.

By: Jeremiah J.

Jeremiah J. — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 05:34:27 +0000

“Satan becomes the villain not because – a la Milton’s Promethean devil – he aspired to take God’s glory but because he sought to destroy the agency and progress of man.”

Chapter 4 of Moses, which contains the agency line, is less opposed to the Milton reading that you indicate. The the Lord says that Satan was cast down “because he rebelled against me” *and* because “he wanted to take away man’s agency”. He also notes that Satan wanted God’s power.

This an important corrective to a common–but incorrect–Mormon telling of the story of the war in heaven. On that account Satan and Jehovah each presented alternative plans. An ideological, Cold-War-like struggle ensued, with the right side championing free agency with the possibilty of failure and the other side arguing for universal salvation at the expense of agency (perhaps an understandable doctrinal mistake, and one that some of the Saints have come close to a time or two). The ones who had the wrong idea of the divine order were condemned to outer darkness forever.

On the true telling God presented a plan. Satan wanted to revise it, and to make himself the center of it. Christ on the other hand accepted God’s plan in full and accepted the least desirable role in that plan. Some others accepted God’s plan in obedience and faith. The rest rebelled and were cast down.

This leaves Christ and Satan neither very Promethean nor un-Promethean. Christ indeed was on the side of human agency, but in obedience to God’s plan. Satan was indeed rebellious–though not in giving anything divine to man, rather in part by wanting to take it away.

By: Ben Huff

Ben Huff — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 09:11:38 +0000

er, “eucatastrophe”?

By: Geoff Johnston

Geoff Johnston — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:14:04 +0000

Ha! Well there is something sort of comforting about that isn’t there? We aren’t as good as him but rather than leaving us in the dust he rushes back to tutor us in the cosmic classroom… I like that idea too.

By: Nate Oman

Nate Oman — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:09:37 +0000

I kind of like the idea that we are simply cosmic losers who have not been doing our homework properly for an endless span of time. Fortunately, god and the universe seem to be forgiving and we have been granted an extension of some sort.

By: Geoff Johnston

Geoff Johnston — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 16:48:14 +0000

The decalogue condemns the coveting of the property of others. It does not condemn coveting per se.

Good because I covet and envy your ability to write posts like this Nate…

If we, like him, are eternal and uncreated beings; and we are capable of becoming gods, the question arises why aren’t we gods yet? Why is god god and we aren’t? The answer can’t be that he has had more time…

That is the question isn’t it? One can get around it in a couple of ways… Some see an ontological gap between humans and Gods (oh yeah — Mormons you know believe this… I won’t name names…). Others reject the idea that our intact spirits are eternal and opt for a variation on the Orson Pratt idea that it is the parts that make up our spirits that are eternal instead. I currently favor a variation on the latter (but that is always subject to change). Of course I’m sure there are other ways people deal with that conundrum as well – chief of which is to ignore its existence entirely…