Random Rationality

“The “being” language is just describing what the text shows: one God, three distinct persons who each fully are that God.” ——————————— Each person is a being. At least that’s normally what the words mean. Seems like word games to me. I agree that each person is fully God. So, it isn’t 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 =1 It is 1+1+1=3…. but then the New Testament says “and these 3 are one”. So, then the question comes… In what sense are they three … and in what sense are they one? How is hen/echad used in the Bible?…

“The Son took on a human nature in addition to His divine nature.” —————————————— Humans are created “in the image and likeness” of God. And then Elohim (plural) said “man has become as one of us (the gods), to know good and evil” (Gen 3:22). Jesus had a divine nature in the sense that he was spiritually and morally perfect from eternity. The divide between Deity and humanity is not ontological…. To claim so would make the very concept of Jesus Christ impossible (a logical contradiction). The purpose of God’s plan is largely so that, through Christ, humanity can “partake in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) through sanctification and resurrection and become like Him. When the scriptures call God “invisible”. That does not mean an attribute/characteristic of God. It is better translated as “not seen”. Even in the beginning of Genesis, Adam and Eve were walking and talking with God. It was a physical presence. They literally hear God “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen 3:8). Back there was a separation between the Father and humanity. Jesus Christ serves as the intermediary between God and man. And even seeing Yahweh/Jehovah, the premortal Christ, was dangerous. Moses had to be transfigured to endure His presence. No fallen human can see the Father and live. Nevertheless, “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matt. 5:8).

LDS would not call Jesus a “lesser being” either…. especially after receiving a glorified/celestial body in the resurrection. To Mormons, Jesus is EXACTLY the same kind of being as God the Father… in every way. In a sense, they are “one God” (in a Biblical unity sense).

“His submission also called Him God and said the fullness of deity dwells in Him.” ————————— Correct. But Jesus was submissive before mortality (He was “chosen/anointed” and then “sent” by the Father). Jesus will still be subject to the Father after mortality (that is what being on the right hand of the throne means… the second in command). But the “fulness” of a literally omnipresent being (the god of the Greek philosophers) cannot exist in a physical body. LDS do not believe God to be literally omnipresent.

“Then you are at odds with Mormon theology. Welcome to the club. Learn your faith….” ——— - — Feel free to explain how grok “did a number on me”. And your arrogance is showing. … Pretending you know LDS theology … and supposedly I don’t. I guarantee that isn’t the case here. Since you are probably referring to the non-canonical King Follett discourse … let’s see what Joseph said… “God the Father lived on an Earth the same as Jesus Christ Himself did… will go back to the beginning before the world was, to show what kind of a being God is. What sort of a being was God in the beginning? ….I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form, like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another… …The scriptures inform us that Jesus said, as the Father hath power in himself, even so hath the Son power, to do what? Why, what the Father did. The answer is obvious, in a manner to lay down his body and take it up again. Jesus, what are you going to do? To lay down my life as my Father did, and take it up again.…. ..What did Jesus do? Why, I do the things I saw my Father do when worlds came rolling into existence. My Father worked out His kingdom with fear and trembling, and I must do the same; and when I get my kingdom, I shall present it to My Father, so that He may obtain kingdom upon kingdom, and it will exalt Him in glory. … Jesus treads in the tracks of His Father, and inherits what God did before; and God is thus glorified and exalted in the salvation and exaltation of all His children”. The interpretation of this verse (John 5:19) given by Joseph, is that God the Father was giving Jesus a revelation showing Jesus Christ a vision of the Father’s life as the Christ of a previous universe/creation.

@grok Updated reconstructions still rest on the same low-end scaling choices. The LIA is the coldest multi-century interval of the last several thousand years and lines up with successive grand solar minima plus elevated volcanism. Models can attribute primary forcing to aerosols and sea-ice feedbacks, but that does not make the solar alignment a pure coincidence. Late-stage interglacials typically show increasing oscillations. One plausible driver is long-term hydrological cycles (shifts in monsoon strength, precipitation belts, snow/ice cover, deep long term ocean cycles, and ocean–atmosphere moisture transport). When one of those oscillations coincides with a cluster of grand solar minima and the associated albedo increases (plus volcanic aerosols), the combined effect can produce the deepest cold of the Holocene. Removing those factors… recovery of solar activity, reduced volcanic forcing, lower albedo, and the reverse of the hydrological/ocean-heat anomalies…. produces a significant rebound toward earlier Holocene norms. Sea levels were roughly 1–2 m higher than present around 3–4 thousand years ago under those warmer mid-to-late Holocene conditions. The rebound from the LIA trough is consistent with returning toward that range rather than requiring an entirely novel CO₂-driven regime. CO₂ contributes, but many other incompletely quantified factors (solar spectral/magnetic effects, long-term ocean circulation, hydrological feedbacks, and albedo changes) remain active on the relevant multi-century timescales. Here is a rough representation of the mechanisms…

When the Bible says “one” (hen/echad)… what does that mean? What did Jesus mean in John 17 when He said “even as”?

@grok said, “Other tselem uses are physical idols, yet Gen 1 links the phrase directly to dominion and draws on ANE royal-statue ideology of representative rule.” Exactly. All the other uses are understood as relating to physical shape. Nobody is denying the “dominion” and representative rule. For LDS it all goes together in a cohesive sense and is consistent across all the verses. “Force” is a strong word, but the LDS perspective is that Hellenistic philosophy influenced the interpretation away from the original understanding… just like Origen admitted.

@grok Don’t forget, the immediate context of Genesis is also where God was literally walking around the garden, Adam and Eve heard him walking there in the cool of the day, and he was talking to them. I think the burden of proof should be on the opposite side to demonstrate that humanity is not literally created in the image and likeness of God. It seems that the Hellenistic “philosophers” influenced people’s interpretation from what they believed previously, as Origen admitted.

I don’t think it has anything to do with race either. The text doesn’t say they “changed race”. It said the skin had a curse/malady/mark “like flint”. That isn’t a race change. The best interpretation is a skin disease. There are all kinds of possibilities.