Michael Flournoy continues his spiral towards spiritual destruction, as well as serving as living proof of the truth of Heb 6:4-6, with a new article:
Let us examine briefly some of his “arguments”:
A God who thrusts people to eternal hell just doesn’t seem merciful. I’ll be the first to admit that hell is a harsh punishment in Protestant Christianity, but it’s even harsher in Mormonism, where God sends his own children there.
Actually, Protestant Christianity is harsher than “Mormonism”; after all, in Protestantism, God, knowing the future exhaustively knows all the “free-will” actions of man (in Reformed theology, they were predetermined, but man is still responsible, a la compatibilism) and creating out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) is the source and originator of our wills. Ultimately, it makes God into the author of sin. Or, in other words:
God created all things ex nihilo.
Therefore, the ultimate source and origin of one’s will is God.
God’s foreknowledge is exhaustive, not contingent (as it is within certain systems, such as Socinianism).
Related to the above, God’s foreknowledge is active, not passive—that is, God decrees all things, including sinful acts, and such events will infallibly take place, and not simply foreknows events passively (as one finds within simple foreknowledge and other theories of foreknowledge).
Therefore, God is the author of sin.
As Blake Ostler notes:
If the causes of our acts originate from causes outside of our control, then we are not free and cannot be praised for blamed for what we do resulting from those causes. If the causes of our actions are outside out control, then our acts that result from such causes are not within our control either. Thus, a person must be an ultimate source of her acts to be free. By an ultimate source, I mean that some condition necessary for her actions originates within the agent herself. The source of action cannot be located in places and times prior to the agent’s freely willing her action. The source of the action is the agent’s own will that is not caused by events or acts outside of he agents but from the agent’s own acts of will. The doctrine of creation ex nihilo is contrary to such a view of agency on its face. Consider that: (1) If a person is created from nothing, then he is never the ultimate source or first cause of her choices. If we assume that (2) all persons are created from nothing, then it follows from (1) and (2) that (3) no person is the ultimate cause or source of anything. This argument does not require any particular concept that God acts in relation to humans or brings about their acts through cooperative grace. All it requires is the notion of creation ex nihilo. If the libertarian demand that we must be the ultimate source of our choices to be morally responsible for them it sound, then God cannot create morally responsible persons ex nihlo. In some sense, persons must be co-creators, first causes, unmoved movers of their own wills, and the source of their own choices. (Blake Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, vol. 2: The Problems of Theism and the Love of God [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2006], 410)
So the “Protestant God” determines, since the eternal past, that the majority of humanity would spend eternity in hell, and if one is Reformed, all to his glory. Only by hoping that his readers are ignorant can he hope to get away with such disingenuous nonsense.
For more, see my article:
While Flournoy is (seemingly) more aligned with Arminian theology, must of the content thereof refutes, exegetically, a lot of his really faulty presuppositions.
The lowest level, the Telestial world, is thought to be so beautiful that if we could see it, we would kill ourselves to get there. In the LDS mindset, this is far more merciful than being sent to a place of fire and torment.
Firstly, the claim one would commit suicide if they saw the Telestial Kingdom is apocryphal; it did not originate, as is often claimed, from Joseph Smith (there are no primary sources supporting such). For a fuller discussion, see Blair Hodges’ article:
Furthermore, with respect to the Telestial Kingdom (“world”), Flournoy is giving the impression that getting there is all nice and rosy. In reality, one has to experience hell itself before being purified to enter therein:
These are they who suffer the wrath of God on earth. These are they who suffer the vengeance of eternal fire. These are they who are cast down to hell and suffer the wrath of Almighty God, until the fullness of times, when Christ shall have subdued all enemies under his feet, and shall have perfected his work. When he shall deliver up the kingdom, and present it unto the Father, spotless, saying: I have overcome and have trodden the winepress alone, even the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. (D&C 76:104-107).
Such is commensurate, of course, with the biblical revelation:
According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay straw--the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If that has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire. (1 Cor 3:10-15, NRSV).
For an exegesis, see:
At least the Mormon god is consistent. Assuming that humanity does comprise God’s children, Jesus’ words to the Pharisees are incredibly harsh in John 8:42 where he denounces their heritage, “If God were your Father, you would love me…” In verse 44 he goes on to say their father is none other than the devil. Mormon doctrine also teaches that the Holy Ghost abandons us when we break the commandments, leaving us in the very teeth of sin when we need him the most. I would expect this kind of behavior from a teenage girl. I would not expect it from the highest being in the universe, the Alpha and the Omega.
While LDS theology holds that we are all the “natural” sons/daughters of God, our theology makes it clear that, as a result of the Fall (e.g., Mosiah 3:9; Ether 3:2), we have to “become” (via adoption) the sons/daughters of God (e.g., D&C 11:30; 34:3; 35:2; 39:4; 42:52; 45:8; cf. D&C 84:34).
As one non-LDS systematic theologian wrote:
Today, when one speaks of adoption, he refers to the legal process whereby a stranger becomes a member of the family. In Paul’s time, however, adoptions referred to that legal process whereby a parent placed his own child in the legal position of an adult son, with all the privileges of inheritance. Someone may question why adoption was required when the child was already a son by birth. It must be remembered that in pagan Rome, a citizen often had many wives and many children. Some of the wives may have been concubines and slaves. The citizen may not have wanted the offspring of his slave wives to receive his titles, position in society, and inheritance. The legal procedure of adoption, therefore, provided a means whereby the citizen could designate those children which he wished to be considered his legal sons and heirs. Through receiving newness of life, believers become children of God. Through adoption, the children of God are declared to be His sons, who have all the privileges and inheritance of sonship. (Alva G. Huffer, Systematic Theology [Oregon, Illin.: The Restitution Herald, 1960], 390)
There is nothing problematic with Jesus’ comments to his opponents in the Gospel of John, just Flournoy either being ignorant (which as a former Latter-day Saint, he should know better) and/or trying to play into the gullibility of his non-LDS audience.
One has to also wonder what Flournoy would do with a text such as John 3:8, where, after affirming baptismal regeneration, Jesus tells Nicodemus that:
The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (NRSV)
Flournoy, wanting to make his god after his own tastes, would reject this as “unloving” and that, in Jesus’ teachings, the Holy Spirit is a fickle teenage girl in terms of attitude. That speaks volumes about Flournoy’s newfound theology more than any problems inherent to Latter-day Saint theology.
Another theological swing and a miss by Flournoy.
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.
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