Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: cms@dragon.uucp Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: The Mormon Religion Message-ID: Date: 17 Aug 90 07:57:53 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Computer Projects Unlimited Lines: 93 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , frog!jp@harvard.harvard.edu writes: > Just prior to this post, I was told thru email that in order to be > Christian, I had to believe that Mary is the Mother of God, if I > believe everything else and not this I was not a Christian. Generally, I skip messages which say "this is a distortion of what I said," because I can read for myself the original. However, as I made this comment in email, I feel moved to say, this is an incomplete rendering of my remarks and constitutes something of a distortion. As I recall, I noted that there were many things one must believe in order to be a Christian, and acknowledging that Jesus Christ is God is one of them. Mary is the Mother of Jesus. Jesus is God. Therefore, Mary is the Mother of God. If a=b and b=c then a=c. I'm glad you posted some of my remarks and responded to them instead of vague email remarks with emendations. I stated several times that I did not care to reproduce all of my arguments, please review the original articles, and you said you would do so. When pressed, I gave you what I considered some of the more glaring Mormon errors, denial that Mary is the mother of God and thus denial that Jesus Christ is God being one of them. (Early church history deleted.) > I would say that Cindy Smith's contention that Mormons are not Christian, > by today's standards is absolutely correct. The christians of 30 AD and > the christians of today, are amazingly different. Mormons, or more > precisely, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, > call ourselves christian, because we are the same type of Christian that > existed when Jesus Christ set up his church in 30 AD, further, we don't > follow the standards set by these councils of 325 AD through 421 AD. I gather by this you mean that the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which court decisions have consistently recognized as the Original from which the Utah church split off, practices the true religion, whereas the Utah church is schismatic and teaches a different religion from the one Joseph Smith began. Of course, you argument might be (unless you are Reorganized), "Just because they're earlier doesn't mean they're right, besides, they're not the earliest church anyway, *they're* the schismatics. Our church preaches the true religion." Gee, that sounds familiar. > John Pimentel ...!{decvax!mit-eddie!harvard}!frog!jp -- Sincerely, Cindy Smith _///_ // SPAWN OF A JEWISH _///_ // _///_ // <`)= _<< CARPENTER _///_ //<`)= _<< <`)= _<< _///_ // \\\ \\ \\ _\\\_ <`)= _<< \\\ \\ \\\ \\ <`)= _<< >IXOYE=('> \\\ \\ \\\ \\_///_ // // /// _///_ // _///_ // emory!dragon!cms <`)= _<< _///_ // <`)= _<< <`)= _<< \\\ \\<`)= _<< \\\ \\ \\\ \\ GO AGAINST THE FLOW! \\\ \\ A Real Live Catholic in Georgia These are my soul opinions, heartfelt and passionately expressed; they do not represent the official opinions of the Anglican Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, any Protestant Church that I know of (I can't keep track, there are so many), or DRAGON, my computer. Did I miss anyone? I'm sure some would like this as a permenant disclaimer, but my .sig is already long enough already, don't you think? [It's always dangerous to use syllogisms in religion, because words tend to have implications that go beyond the simple statements that logic uses. Your proof that Mary is the Mother of God is surely one of these. While I agree with what you say when it is properly understood, I'd like to say a bit more, for the sake of those to whom the phrase looks simply absurd (and possibly blasphemous). First, the original discussion was not in English. The term used was "theotokos", which is closer to "God-bearer" than "Mother of God". (However even in Greek the term was mean to be attention-getting and perhaps somewhat paradoxical. While the English is probably more extreme, it's not completely inappropriate.) The context was discussions with various groups that could not believe God would really deign to put himself fully into a human. This led to ideas such as God deserting Jesus at the crucifixion, because God would not be willing to suffer. Theotokos was meant to emphasize that God truly did assume a human form, and experienced both birth and death. The term is extreme because of course the idea of being someone's mother normally brings to mind the implication that the person didn't exist before and they were brought into existence through the mother. Obviously no one means to say that Mary brought God into existence. However an older phrase for birth is "bring into the world". According to Christian doctrine, Mary did bring God into the world. --clh]