Jacob over at New Cool Thang is right.
If there is any topic that causes my mind to explode with passion over doctrinal differences with my LDS friends, this is it.
But godly evangelicals, from the 18oo’s and stretching into the new millennium, don’t murder Mormons because of these beliefs. We don’t use pistols. We use pens. And we wield pens to share the contra because we love.
Thinking of heart issues . . .
Jesus in Idaho Falls 
Todd writes:
“If there is any topic that causes my mind to explode with passion over doctrinal differences with my LDS friends, this is it.”
Yes, indeed.
If deification (“partaking of the Divine Nature” as St. Peter puts it) is only possible because the Divine Nature and human nature are already the same in essence, it is not worth pursuing; if we are already pre-existent, then there is no qualitative difference between the Incarnation of Christ and my “incarnation”.
Oh, and the guns thing: it is ironic, is it not, that faith in the Crucified should have ever been defended with physical weapons: “when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”.
Of course, if there is no essential difference between us and (the) God(s), then the only difference that matters is the level of POWER, which kinda makes the use of guns (or the ballot box) inevitable…
Very good.
Today, I have been looking at John 6:15; and I just saw this in a commentary this afternoon.
D.A. Carson notes, “The real nature of Jesus’ kingship becomes a major issue in the passion narrative (18:33ff.). The truth of the matter is that Jesus’ kingdom was like no other (18:36). Jesus himself knew that the way his kingdom would triumph would not be by beating the enemy in siege warfare, but by dying and rising from the dead; ‘he would go to Jerusalem not to wield the spear and bring the judgment, but to receive the spear thrust and bear the judgment’.”
“If deification (”partaking of the Divine Nature” as St. Peter puts it) is only possible because the Divine Nature and human nature are already the same in essence, it is not worth pursuing; if we are already pre-existent, then there is no qualitative difference between the Incarnation of Christ and my “incarnation”.”
I don’t understand the cause and effect in either of these statements. Why do you find either of them effective descriptions of LDS belief? Why do you find them well said?
We’ve come a long way since the mid-1800s.