Gadianton wrote:meadowchik wrote: I grew up in, God was the ultimate scientist, not a magician
Yes, exactly. This is precisely how God was billed and this is what everyone knew and thought, including all of the apologists. No doubt this is what they still think, as revealed in a certain debate with Michael Shermer. The disjointed position does have an explanation though. One of the key differences between Mormonism and the rest of Christianity is a belief in works. I always thought this made a great deal of sense: a mass murderer couldn't just say a quick prayer before the end and go to heaven. The apologists believe the same, mark my word, but they're beaten down from battle with Evangelical Christianity. I don't have an answer for this part in particular, but for some reason, as absurd as the apologists found the beliefs of their Christian neighbors, they got locked into this defensive position where they came to implicitly accept the terms of the debate, that whatever side exalted Jesus the most appeared to be the true Christians. And so the apologists scrambled to find a position that made sense of both grace and works; they came up with pseudo-wisdom such as the "parable of the bicycle" to cover themselves, and in speaking they came to use grace terminology more and more often, especially in public. It irritated them to no end that people wouldn't accept that Jesus does everything in Mormon theology. It was a big competition, and by golly the Jesus of Mormonism was going to be equally as loving and forgiving and equally beyond us mortals in power as the Jesus in EV Christianity.
And so it's like, Greg Smith, this guy from Canada, a displaced Moplogist, is stuck in character fighting for his life in the long-standing feud with Evangelicals over the Jesusness of Jesus, dressing down his fellow Saints with the tone of a gap-toothed minister from southern Georgia for taking away from the "glory of Lard Jesus". The Interpreter crowd -- the students of the apologists generally -- have been educated in the need to appear "more Christian" and likely have read Smith's earlier piece from this year. That alone doesn't explain disagreement; I think the piece is very ambitious, as others have pointed out, but I think the dismissals on spiritual grounds are pretty silly.
Looking over Smith's article, I have to giggle at his dismissals of the validity of God allowing us to technically contribute to eternal progression. What are temples for, again? If God would find it helpful for us to turn our hearts to our fathers and do their work today, why can't celestial beings use work done here on earth in an infinite arc of eternal progress?
I agree with you: I can't think of any reason for resistance to the possibility except to hold of suspicion that Mormon's think they can do Jesus' work. It's ironic, since we already do it, spend millions and millions of hours and dollars doing it already.
