Comments on: Half of the Mormons Believe there is More than One Way to Interpret their Religion

By: David

David — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:12:06 +0000

By: Jettboy

Jettboy — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:30:16 +0000

I have no answer to that Ezra other than faith and prayer. However, even with lack of “progressive revelation,” you have to choose Catholicism, mainline Protestantism, Evangelical Protestantism, and other “orthodox” variations. These are supposed to be the core dogmatic Christians with no “continual revelation” in their theology. Yet, they are so different from each other on so many theological topics that they might as well be different. An outsider would have to question what “tradition” means.

That is if you discount Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and lots of other religious faiths. If I didn’t trust what I consider my own encounters with G-d I could fully understand why a person would be atheist. Religion has proven to change drastically no matter how “unchanging” of the supposed clarity of doctrine.

By: Ezra

Ezra — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:08:48 +0000

That seems to be the danger of “progressive revelation.” How do you pass down the traditions of the Christian faith, as St. Paul observed, and reckon them with revelations that seem to run counter to the Word?

Is it possible for all revelations to square with one another — or at some point do you observe that the spiritual knowledge coming from a brother is of a different spirit?

Curious.

Ezra

By: Jettboy

Jettboy — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:04:19 +0000

Of course there is more than one way to interpret Mormonism. Part of its teaching is about personal revelation and the theology is not based specifically on dogma. I must say that “reading Church history outside of Sunday School” is a danger to testimony is a red herring in this discussion. For me losing faith because of reading Church history is less about faith and more about lack of imagination and too strict of populist morality and expectations.

By: Javelin

Javelin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:15:23 +0000

One has to have a very strong testimony if they read lots of church history. I’m talking about all of church history that is not found in the Sunday School lessons. That makes them question some of what happens today. Some Californian Mormons were not comfortable with Prop 8. It was a strange feeling to come to church and hear things one knew to be untrue, and could not say so.

I would say that many of the lessons in church get recycled where every four years we keep saying the same thing. This is hard for those of us who want to share spiritual knowledge that is not coming from the Brethren.