Jesus and the Devil: Bruvvers?

You're joking right?

Isaiah 14:2?

14:12 How you have fallen from heaven,
O morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!

///

Um, yeah.

How about The Gospel of John?

John 1
The Deity of Jesus Christ
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2He was in the beginning with God.

3All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

///

Satan was a created thing.

Jesus created ALL things.

We may indeed be given the offer to become "sons" of God, but certainly the idea that Jesus and Satan "are" spiritual brothers is blasphemy at worst, and heresy at best.

I say it is blaspemy.

Oh, come now, Rod. You know as well as I do that Christians are every bit as violent as Muslims, and that violent Christian extremists are responsible for the daily murders and beatings of homosexuals and of teenage girls who dress like Bratz dolls that we hear about every night on the news. (Except for Fox News, because they hide those stories.)

:)

Seriously, though, I can see the Huckabee comment situation either way. On the one hand, I agree that questions about the more unusual Mormon beliefs shouldn't be completely off limits, and in fact I would think that a devout adherent of the Mormon faith would welcome the opportunity to clarify any public misconceptions or half-truths that have filtered into the public consciousness. On the other, though, as Rod points out, it might be said that asking what a candidate specifically believes about the nature of Christ or the relationship between Jesus and the fallen angels is delving into matters that can't possibly affect a president's policies (unlike questions about whether a Muslim supports Islam's more violent teachings); this is where Romney's reaction might be understandable, because at that point the asking of these questions starts to seem like a particularly underhanded sort of negative campaigning.

Like the proverbial "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" sort of "gotcha" question, Huckabee's comment put Romney in a difficult position: answering the question with a firm insistence that such matters are of no importance to the presidency might seem like a dodge to some of the Evangelical voters Huckabee particularly wants to reach with this question, but actually attempting to explain Mormon teaching in the matter might be even worse for Romney's chances with these voters than dodging it. With those options Romney's campaign may have felt that attacking Huck for raising the question was indeed the best possible response.

Your suggestion that stating truth can never be an attack is not true. How often do we westerners throw around the Muslim belief in the many virgins after death? Even if it is true (and I don't pretend to know for certain), many throw out theologically insignificant beliefs that seem strange to western ears in an attempt to discredit others.

It is misleading to state without qualification that Mormons believe Jesus and Satan are brothers, as that statement, without qualification, implies that Mormons believe many things that they do not in fact believe. Mormons believe that God the Father created all things, so He created both Jesus (God the Son), Lucifer (Satan), and all mankind. (Mormons read the New Testament more literally than many other Christians on this point; when Christ said He was the Son of God, we take Him at His word.) Jesus and Lucifer are "brothers" in the sense that God the Father created both of them. It doesn't imply any special affinity or friendship between Jesus and Lucifer. Obviously, they are on opposite sides of the whole good/evil divide.

The Gospel of John, from the start, as well as the rest of the Apostolic record (The New Testament) stands in stark opposition to what the Mormons from Joseph Smith to all following Mormon prophets and revelators have invented and attempt to call "Christian."

Huckabee's question is not wrongful behavior. Jesus asked many questions of what beliefs people held.

What do Catholics and Orthodox believe is the relationship between Jesus and Satan?

Well, Satan always said that Jesus was the black sheep of the family, getting drunk, hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors, attacking honest business men...

Now, what any of this has to do with being President is a bit of mystery to all us literate folk, but I suppose in the corn fields of Iowa it makes some kind of sense, though I really hope that there is someone in Iowa who finds all this religion talk in a political campaign disgusting.

The idea of Romney as President is about as distasteful as green jello but Huckleberry-er-Huckabee is coming across as even more slimey than Hillary.

The point is not the theology, Rod (and David).

The point is that Huckabee is rolling around Iowa advertising himself as a "Christian" -- something that would be completely necessary (he's a Baptist preacher, for Pete's sake) unless he was trying to portray his main opponent, Romney, as non-Christian. Which Huck clearly is trying to do.

Kuo, in the commentary you quote favorably, Rod, basically said he did not think the U.S. should ever elect a President who is not a Christian (or, perhaps, someone Jewish would be OK too). And he defined Romney as not Christian.

I'm not a theologian, so I can't dispute the last sentence either way. But I can call you both on making "religious tests" despite your protests to the contrary.

Erin et al,

Huckabee didn't ask Romney that question; in fact he didn't ask the question in a public forum at all. He asked the question of a reporter who had been lecturing him about Mormonism in an hours-long interview. It's the reporter who chose to bring Huckabee's question into the public forum.

I've heard the bullet-point "Mormons believe Jesus and Satan are brothers" as well. It's quite possible that Huckabee didn't know anything more than just that bullet point, and was honestly asking the reporter- who had pushed the conversation into a Mormonism debate in the first place- whether this was true.

Seems to me that when a reporter insists that a candidate talk about religion, and is eventually able to extract a gotcha quote- that's not about the candidate "going there," that's about the media trying to force the candidate into an already-contrived story.

Wow. I just have to love the comments so far. I feel as if I never actually exited from "The Golden Compass." Which, by the way, is an excellent movie, very exciting, beautifully filmed, and with more dynamic female characters in the cast than any recent movie I recall. Nicole Kidman makes a divine villainess. But I digress. As does the presidential campaign, when it veers off into discussions better suited to a fantasy novel.

Donny: Jesus created Satan! Heresy, blasphemy, heresy, blasphemy . . . decisions, decisions.

Erin: obligatory cute but irrelevant verbal slappage of gayz 'n' slutz--though we Christians magnanimously don't slap them up for real. Smiley-face!

mm: helpfully points out that this is really all about who gets to rule OTHER PLANETS. D'oh!!

JD: we take the Bible more literally than you! And Jesus and Lucifer ARE brothers, but they don't like each other!

Reader John: Do we really want to open a theological Pandora's box? First sensible question so far! Give that man a gold star!

Donny again: Huckabee is like Jesus! So it's okay!

Holy cow . . . spirit of Schadenfreude, where are you when we need you? I wonder how much other countries are falling over themselves laughing when they read that these are the important issues on the table in the world's most powerful and scientifically advanced nation. No, no don't open that box . . . oops, too late. Reminds me of something Hilaire Belloc once said:
Oh! Let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about!

Whether the doctrine is true (it is) is irrelevant. I thought Gov. Huckabee said he wasn't going to discuss the doctrine of other religions.

It is an attack in that it is a well known anti-Mormon trope used to marginalize Mormon doctrine and a Mormon candidate.

Gov. Huckabee's claim to not know this and "innocently" ask this of a New York Times reporter defies credulity. What kind of context could justify a question like that?

As a Mormon, we don't deny this doctrine. The Church doesn't deny this either. It makes sense to us and that should be enough. Does this doctrine pose a threat to how a canddiate handles the the war on terror or solving Social Security?

Yet, a seminary-trained, Baptist minister claims he doesn't the significance of this. Instead, he consider this line of questioning is appropriate while discussing politics on the record with a reporter. He apologized but he got the point across and that was all he had to do.

Because its a smear, used for the false implication that Christ is somehow devilish, or Satan is somehow part of the Godhead. It would be like saying, "Don't Christians believe the Jews killed Jesus?" Its technically accurate in a way but its meant to give the wrong impression that Christians are running around yelling 'Christkiller!'

Thus, the relationship between Satan and Jesus is an adversarial one, yet they are fundamentally different beings. Jesus Christ is God. Satan is a creature. There is no room for calling them "spirit brothers" in Christianity.

Jesus Christ is both creator and creature in Christianity. The Incarnation, right? So Christians certainly believe the shocking doctrine that Pol Pot is Hitler's brother. The Mormon innovation, it seems to me, is not to claim that Christ was created in some sense (Mormons do not believe that Christ was *wholly* created); the innovation is the claim that angels and fallen angels and humankind are all the same class of being.

That is why Mormonism is a "cult" theologically for its false Christology; but it is not a "cult" sociologically, as its members are generally admirable in their personal and community lives.

To their credit, the Mormons (if asked) will candidly reject all the Councils of the Church, preferring the notion that the Church got corrupted almost immediately and that Joseph Smith had to rectify that with divine guidance. They differ in that regard in degree, not in kind, from Protestants who believe the essentially the same thing about the historic Church but think the Reformers recovered it by going back more rigorously and intentionally to the New Testament, or that the Reformers then lost it and their own little sect got it back again the same way.

So Romney's bad theology is a bogus issue for anyone other than theocrats. Huckabee's question was as much an attack on Romney as it would be were I to ask him at a political forum if it's true that he spiritualizes away Christ's clear and insistent teaching, in and surrounding John 6:54, that "Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life." Do we really want to open a theological Pandora's box?

All very fair. Thank you.

Jesus Christ is both creator and creature in Christianity. The Incarnation, right? .... The Mormon innovation, it seems to me, is not to claim that Christ was created in some sense (Mormons do not believe that Christ was *wholly* created);

That's not quite right. Jesus Christ is uncreated -- eternally begotten of the Father. The Incarnation refers to His taking on the human condition, not to having been created in any way by the Father. There was never a time when God the Son was not.

All of that, however, is Christian theology. I believe it, Mormons do not. Spirited discussion of the doctrinal differences is perfectly appropriate in the blogosphere and elsewhere.

But it doesn't belong in a presidential campaign, and Huckabee's use of this particular LDS doctrine against Romney (whom I dislike, by the way, for reasons that have nothing to do with his religion) is unseemly and wholly inappropriate.

That's not quite right. Jesus Christ is uncreated -- eternally begotten of the Father. The Incarnation refers to His taking on the human condition, not to having been created in any way by the Father. There was never a time when God the Son was not.

I agree that "there never was a time when God the Son was not". But I just don't think its a correct understanding of the Incarnation to say that Christ is not also a creature. I think its false to the majesty of the Incarnation to say that Christ didn't experience creaturehood (which, IMHO, is an essential part of the "human condition."). Christians normally believe that Christ has both a divine and a human nature, which suggests to me that he is both Uncreated Creator and created at the same time.

I also think your denial that Christ is in any way created leads to logical difficulties. If Christ's flesh was eternal and not creaturely, how could he perish on the cross? Perhaps you could explain that away by saying that his flesh wasn't Him, properly speaking, but thats pretty distasteful in my view: The relationship of body and spirit should not be that of a horse to its rider but should be one of union.

SUCKERS!!!

Osvaldo,

The reporter chose what to print and what to emphasize, out of quite a long interview. Huckabee wasn't making a public statement, he was asking a question in a one-on-one conversation. It's not small & weak for the interviewee to ask the interviewer a question for a change.

Politically unwise? Probably. An honest, innocent question? Probably. Worth the air time it has gotten? No. At least not when issues of poverty, war, education, fair trade, etc. deserve our focus. Mass media is giving me a headache. Did anyone other than my son kee[p track of how many "thank-you" interruptions the Dems got from the debate mediator verse those given to the Reps.? Or did anyone notice how the Republican debate was "boring" and the Democrat debate (last ones in Iowa) was "subdued"? Go figure.

As a Baptist, Huckabee would not believe that he's actually partaking of the flesh and blood of Jesus while taking Communion, rather that it's a symbolic act. So, this question would not be very difficult for him to answer.

At the risk of getting off topic briefly, I'm not sure the question would be all that easy for Huckabee to answer if you gave me enough time, under our new campaign-as-inquisition model, to paw him over. IMHO, the context of John 6:54 doesn't allow a "symbolic act" view. Christ's disciples, some of whom abandoned Him over the matter, weren't scandalized by a "symbolic act" view, and He didn't back off after seeing that they were scandalized.

But my point is not that Huck would be dumbstruck. The point is (1) the question of Huck about John 5:54 and context would be an attack and (2) it would open a Pandora's box, the eventuality of which is a Balkanized politics where Zwinglian Protestants won't vote for Catholic or Orthodox "cannibals" (and vice-versa), Calvinists won't vote for Arminians, cessationists won't vote for Charismatics and so on. Do we want to go there?