Reviewing ‘Eternal Man’ Part 6 – Freedom and Fulfillment

The sixth in a seven part series.

Chapter six of Eternal Man is called ‘Freedom and Fulfillment’, which addresses free will. Questions such as:

In what sense, if at all, is man free?
Does everything that happens, have to happen?
Given the same conditions could I have been or done otherwise?

are presented. Madsen gives what was then some new developments which he felt added some freshness to a long stalemate between determinists and indeterminists.

Reviewing ‘Eternal Man’ Part 5 – Evil and Suffering

Chapter five of ‘Eternal Man’ by Truman Madsen is on Evil and Suffering. Madsen concedes that the most staggering objection to a personable God is the overwhelming fact of human inequality and suffering. He then gives a few examples of extreme suffering. For most believers in God, they resort to believing that the ways of God are strange and inscrutable. Some religions go so far as to deny evil. Others find it difficult to not assign evil to God. For one there is no problem, for the other there is no hope.

This chapter is a unique chapter in that most of it is a hypothetical conversation between a woman with a baby that was born blind and paralyzed, and Joseph Smith. Madsen has such a gift for poetic descriptions that I can not hope to match. Yet, I do not wish to simply retype this conversation. If you want the full conversation, buy the book. I will attempt to provide the basics of this conversation in my usual simple way.

Reviewing ‘Eternal Man’ Part 4 – The Spirit and The Body

Chapter four of Eternal Man has to do with the spirit and the body. Madsen begins by presenting three statements from Joseph Smith:

- We came into this world that we might receive a body and present it pure before God in the celestial kingdom.
- The great principle of happiness consists in having a body.
- All beings who have bodies have power over those who have not.

Reviewing ‘Eternal Man’ Part 3 – Creation and Procreation

Chapter three of Eternal Man is ‘Creation and Procreation’. Madsen begins by providing a poetic writing by Joseph Smith:

And I heard a great voice bearing record from Heav’n,
He’s the Saviour, and Only Begotten of God-
By him, of him, and through him, the worlds were all made,
Even all that career in the heavens so broad.
Whose inhabitants, too, from the first to the last,
Are sav’d by the very same Saviour of ours;
And, of course, are begotten God’s daughters and sons,
By the very same truths, and the very same pow’rs.

Madsen then asks – ‘But is Divine fatherhood in any sense similar to human fatherhood’? He mentions what he feels is the one important similarity. It is that in both Divine and human fatherhood there is a transmission of traits and attributes. He then offers two anticipated objections to this assertion.

Reviewing ‘Eternal Man’ Part 2 – Identity or Nothing

Chapter two of ‘Eternal Man’ has to do with the our origins. Joseph Smith taught that man as a primal intelligence is eternal. The spirit-elements that compose man’s Divinely-sired spirit and the matter-elements that compose the body are also eternal. The destiny of these elements are to be inseparably connected throughout eternity.

Reviewing ‘Eternal Man’ – Part 1

Truman Madsen wrote a series of essays that was eventually published in book form under the title of Eternal Man. I have come to find out that I favor the theological ideas of B. H. Roberts and Truman Madsen, and I would like to provide a review of this book for my own benefit if nobody else’s. Chapter 1 of the book serves as an introduction and outline for the rest of the book. I would like to encourage discussion and comments on any of these reviews.

Um, God? It’s Golf Season Again.

Heavenly Father,

Could you please help me find my golf ball?  I know it is around here somewhere.  I’ve looked everywhere, and it is time to either find the ball, or take a penalty stroke and a drop.  Could you PLEASE help me find the ball?

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Patriarchal Blessings and the Foreknowledge of God

 Many members of the church seem to have a contradiction in their beliefs and attitudes when it comes to patriarchal blessings and the foreknowledge of God.

One..Brave..Priest..

My oldest son turned sixteen a couple of weeks ago.  This is the age that young men can be ordained as Priests in the Aaronic Priesthood.  This carries with it the authority to baptize, but more frequently the opportunity to bless the sacrament in our weekly worship services.  I was pleased to be able to ordain him to that office.

We live in a small and spread out ward in southern Michigan.  And we frequently will need to scramble to find people to help with the sacrament.  Sometimes we have enough young men, sometimes we don’t.  My son thought that the chances of him being asked to bless the sacrament were pretty high.  Because of this, he read over the sacrament prayers several times during the week.

Sure enough, on his first Sunday as a priest, there were no other priests on time for church.  And he was asked if he would handle the blessing of the sacrament.  He looked as white as a ghost and said that he was not ready.  I offered to go up with him, and we could bless the sacrament as father and son.  He cautiously agreed.

While we were sitting behind the sacrament table, and the announcements were being given, I began explaining how things were usually done in the blessing of the sacrament.  And I pointed out where the cards were that contained the sacrament prayers.  I explained that these prayers need to be word-for-word.  I suggested that he read really slow, and to read every word.  He then asked me what I found a profound question.  He asked, “How am I supposed to read it with my eyes shut?”

This explains why he was so nervous.  He thought that he had to have these prayers memorized perfectly, and that if he didn’t get it right he would have to try it over and over again in front of everybody.

This also explains my oldest boy.  He is a blindly obedient young man.  He has been told that you close your eyes during the prayer, and he does that, every time, without exception.

I am not sure how ‘heroic’ this all is, but when I consider his mindset going into this experience, and his willingness to go up there in spite of this, I am quite proud of him.  Well done, son.

Brain Plasticity and Pornography

There is no more frequent and stern warning given by leaders to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints than to avoid pornography. One only needs to go to lds.org and do a General Conference search on pornography to get quite a list of talks on the subject. It seemed to be of particular importance to former president Gordon B. Hinckley.