[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Eternal progression (the tip of the iceberg) is insane. INSANE!. I say that with a smile on my face and am not attacking YOU, but whatever that is, it has nothing whatever to do with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit of the Christian canon of scripture. I will refrain for now from anything further in that regard.
That is a vast and rather chintzy oversimplification which I cannot help but believe you’re aware of. I have a tape around here somewhere of myself teaching abuncha Christian friends at their request about Mormon origins. (late 80’s) When I can I’ll transfer it into an mp3 and post it here. You will regrettably not be at all blessed by it, but I doubt you’ll be surprised either.
I meant I thought that Nibley was involved in the campaign to deny that Brigham taught that Adam was god and I also thought he had something to do with the salamander letter debacle somehow. That was real life thriller there huh? Mystery, murder and intrigue. Of course now there’s a couple guys here (I’m lookin at you Chris) furiously googling what that was all about.
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Haha, well to be fair, Eternal Progression has been wildly exaggerated and speculated upon by Mormons, though even the core doctrine is obviously radically different than mainline Protestant doctrine, however, I simply believe the scriptures literally when they say things like, “When we see him we will be like Him.” I do want to make one thing in that regards absolutely clear: we believe God’s work is to glorify us and that we might share in a portion of His glory. The extent of that has been speculated upon to no end, but the truth is that what we know for sure is very little, and only hinted at. After all, we can speculate all we want so long as we keep in mind that no matter how good we think it may be, it will still surpass any expectation or imagination we have. I think you and I are both familiar with the arguments and counterarguments, so I’ll save us some typing and agree to disagree on that one.
I maintain that Fawn Brodie is unimpressive. She claims insights that frankly aren’t there, skews the history, and stretches the truth. Nibley was unique in that he went and actually read the original sources from which she drew and he pointed out some gaping flaws in logic and comprehension.
If you really want a fair, honest insight into the origins of Mormonism, read something by Richard Bushman. He’s an LDS scholar but he’s given us the most honest and in depth history of Joseph Smith and the church without glossing over anything that’s actually credible. “Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling” and “The Origins of Mormonism” are highly recommended, though RSR is a very imposing book.
I don’t know of any campaign to deny what Brigham taught. Most Mormon scholars today believe that either: we don’t have all that lecture well recorded enough to understand things, or that Brigham was simply speculating and got a little wild, or some even believe that Brigham was testing the Saints to see if they’d go home and pray about things or just blindly follow him. I don’t really buy into that last one. The fact that our sources are sparse and that we have numerous accounts of what Brigham taught about the Godhead without referring to and Adam/God doctrine leads me to think that it’s just not something we can answer with present scholarship.
Yeah, the Salamander stuff was crazy. Nibley wasn’t brought in on anything, so far as I can tell. Basically this Bishop started buying these crazy historical finds that were, to be sure, impressive forgeries (the FBI admitted that if the forger hadn’t told them, they wouldn’t have been able to identify them as such). Then the forger hinted at some bigger things relating to church history, and that he needed some funds to acquire them, the Bishop put up like 250K$, but the the forger got scared, had three bombs- one at the Bishop’s house which I think killed or injured his wife, one at the Bishop’s work which I think injured a few people, and the third blew up in his car which is how he was found out. I suppose it’s possible the Bishop contacted Nibley to look into these things.
