Heavenly Parents and the dyadic/ one-creator God - an update

As I have often written, but not recently, I believe that God is dyadic - consisting of a Heavenly Father and Mother, a man and woman who are (in some sense) incarnate and not spirits. 

This is the Mormon understanding, and reading about Mormon theology was where I first came across it. 

I am not trying to persuade other people that I am right; but I shall here consider why I personally believe this, and what it is that I believe. 

In the first place it is due to what might be termed intuition; in the sense that when I first encountered this idea, my heart seemed to jump and warm; as if I was discovering something true, good and with great possibilities of more-good. 

There was an immediate and positive sense... not so much that this was true, but that I wanted this to be true - this came before my conviction that it was true.  

Following this I read more about Mormon theology, and realized that the dyadic, man-woman nature of our Heavenly parents was just part of an entire metaphysical understanding of creation (including procreation - the creation of beings including people) as something dynamic, interactive, developing, evolutionary, open-ended, and expanding. 

In other words, that creation itself was creative (and therefore creation was not, as I had previously assumed, a done-thing, a closed accomplishment, a finished totality - once-and-for-always.) 

I then began to explore the implications of these ideas for myself; using concepts I got from William Arkle (and his reflections on God's motivations for creation); and Owen Barfield, including Barfield's accounts of the 'polar' philosophy of ST Coleridge. 

I was also building on a longer-term fascination with 'animism' - with the (apparently innate and spontaneous) tendency to regard the world (the universe) as consisting primarily of beings - all of whom were alive, purposive, conscious - albeit in different ways, at different scales and timescales etc.

The motivation for creation, and why God should have created this kind of creation, was something I had found difficult to grasp (none of the usual explanations made much sense to me). But when I conceptualized God as the loving dyad of a man and woman, then it seemed obvious why such a combination would have wanted to create - including others who might eventually become like themselves.   

Furthermore, it did not seem possible that creation had arisen from any state of oneness of self-sufficiency, since this would make creation arbitrary; nor could creation arise from a tendency towards differentiation, because that would lead to meaningless-purposeless chaos. 

There must (I felt) have been some kind of original 'polarity' - in abstract and physics-like terminology, there would need to be at-least two different kinds of 'force', the interaction of which would be creation. Coleridge (also Barfield and Arkle) saw this in terms of a 'masculine'-tendency for expansion and differentiation; and a 'feminine'-tendency for one-ness and integration.  

But in terms of my (non-abstract) preferred metaphysics of beings and animistic assumptions; 'masculine' and 'feminine' simplifies to just a primordial man and a primordial woman; this would mean two complementary, unlike-but-of-the-same-kind, beings; the love of whom would lead to a desire for creation.  

(In the same kind of way that - in this mortal life - love of man and woman usually leads to a desire for procreation.)

At some point I validated this understanding by means of meditative prayer; by refining and asking a simple question, feeling that this question had 'got-through', and receiving a clear inner response.  

In summary; the above account is something-like the sequence by which I desired, concluded, became-convinced-by, the metaphysical assumption of God as Heavenly parents; by some such mixture of feelings, reasoning, and 'feedback'. 

All this happened a good while ago (about a decade); since when I have been interpreting things on the basis of this framework, and it seems to 'work', so far.

What the real-life, this world, implications are; include a reinforcement of the idea that the family is (and ought to be) the primary social structure; on earth as it is in Heaven; and a clarification of the nature of creation - starting with the primary creation by Heavenly parents and also including the secondary creation of beings (such as men and women) within primary creation. 

This metaphysics has further helped me understand both why and how love is the primary value of Christianity; i.e. because love made possible creation in the first place, and is the proper basis of 'coordinating' the subcreative activities of all the beings of creation.  

And it helped me understand how creation can be open-ended and expansile, without degenerating into chaos; because it is love that makes the difference.

Also, it helped me to understand the nature of evil; and how evil is related either to the incapacity for love or its rejection. Without love, the innate creativity of individual beings is going to be selfish and hostile to that of other beings: non-loving attitudes, thinking, and actions by beings, will tend to destroy the harmony of creation.  

I don't talk much about this understanding, and I often use the generic term 'God'; because it is difficult to explain briefly and clearly that the dyadic God of our Heavenly parents serves as a single and 'coherently unified' source of creation

But God is two, not one, because only a dyad can create, and creation must-be dyadic. 

And the dyadic just-is the one-ness of God the primal creator.  

Note added: It may be said, correctly, that the above does not depend on the Bible; but then neither does the metaphysics of orthodox-classical theology depend on scripture. We can find resonances and consistencies within the Bible - but assumptions such as: strict monotheism - creation ex nihilo (from nothing) by a God outside of creation and Time, the Athanasian Creed descriptions of the Trinity, God's omnipotence and omniscience, original sin... These are ideas that would not be derived-from a reading of scripture - the most that can be said is that someone who already ideas can find Biblical references that can be interpreted as consistent-with these assumptions. They are (apparently) products of philosophically sophisticated theologians who brought these ideas to Christianity from earlier and mostly pagan (Greek and Roman) sources. Also, these kinds of metaphysical assumption are theistic - to do with a personal god - but not specifically Christian. The salvific work of Jesus Christ (principally: making possible resurrected life everlasting in Heaven) was done within already-existing creation, and Christianity is not therefore an explanation of creation-as-such.   

The evilness of evil (in a pluralist universe)

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The reason that mainstream theologians have persisted for 2000 years with monism (and an Omni- concept of God) despite the insoluble and fundamental problems these cause for Christianity is that they want to be able to say that God is necessarily good - i.e. that the goodness of God is built-into reality, part of the existence of the universe; and therefore that to oppose God is to be irrational (i.e. they want to be able to state that evil is simply irrational).

(Note: this doesn't actually work, because it makes evil into a kind of insanity rather than a deliberate choice of evil. For instance, Satan could not rationally choose to rebel against God and reject salvation, and because he is a high angel who would know for certain the terrible consequences of rebellion; this framework makes Satan into a kind of lunatic or demented creature, rather than truly-evil).

Pluralism would regard this as a mistaken purpose in theology since it makes a universe where choice is meaningless and Man is a puppet. Such a universe is incompatible with Christianity.

(i.e. Incompatible in a common sense way. But obviously if theology is allowed to get-away-with recourse to paradox and mysticism then anything is possible - and paradox and mysticism have duly been built-into mainstream intellectual Christianity since not long after the death of the Apostles - e.g. in describing the nature of Christ, the Holy Trinity and the operations of free will.)

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As I understand it, pluralism starts with assumptions and a situation that 'just is' and cannot be (or does not need to be) explained further - and the main assumption is the God is God - He is just there.

(And, for Mormons, so is Mother in Heaven 'just there' - because reality is dyadic, male and female are two complementary and irreducible parts that together make unity. ^See note below)

God is inside the already existing universe of reality (matter or 'stuff') which is also 'just there' and has certain properties which are understood by us as the laws of nature including the principles of beauty and morality.

We Men (and other intelligences) were also 'just there' but as some kind of essence that lacked self-awareness.

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God (and, for Mormons, Mother in Heaven) then made us into self-aware 'children of God' so that now we are all related to God and to each other - relationships (or one enormously large family with multiple sub-families) is the reality of the situation in which we find ourselves.

Therefore, 'good' is to choose to live in accordance with these relationships, as established by God; evil is to reject these relationships and aim to live as solitary and self-sufficient gods. (This is pride.)

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So evil is a choice. It is not necessarily irrational, it is not necessarily dishonest - except that it seems always to involve a denial of the true situation and of our debt to God - but evil can be a hatred and rejection of the divine families in which we find ourselves - perhaps a hatred of God for forcing us to become self-conscious (and therefore liable to suffer) and to having saddled us with unasked-for responsibilities to our divine parents and siblings.

I think it is at least conceivable that a person might simply choose to reject self consciousness, and/or family ties  and aspire to live utterly alone. By the mercy of God this state could be made into an unselfconscious bliss; but this state too might be rejected and the person would then live in 'hell' of utter and self-imposed eternal and self-aware solitude.

The evil of this 'hell' comes from rejecting divine relationships but clinging to selfhood; rejecting gratitude and responsibility towards God but clinging to God-given powers.

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The primary moral decision in the history of reality was therefore that God (and Mother in Heaven) unilaterally decided to 'make' us into self-conscious personages, to make us into His children. His motive for this was love and our own benefit, just as the motive of earthly parents for 'making' children should be love and the children's own benefit - nonetheless it was unilateral, and is irreversible.

Consequently, because God is loving; I think it must have been the case that God made provision for us to opt-out of this situation in which we find ourselves, and to return to primordial unawareness and unpersonhood.

This is why I believe God has made provision for 'Nirvana' i.e. what feels-like loss of self/ personhood, and reabsorption into the blissful state of His goodness.

This is not an actual stripping away of our status as Sons and Daughters of God - that is irreversible - but it does allow a non-evil choice to reject the basic situation in which we find ourselves - to reject self-awareness, incarnation, intelligence, power and everything else. 

To 'return' to original un-consciousness.

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But these are all choices: suboptimal, sad - but self-chosen and self-inflicted. They are simply a consequence of the reality of agency/ free will.

The evilness of evil is really about the gratuitous spitefulness of trying to wreck the self-consciousness and divine family relationships which other people want and have chosen; of trying to persuade other people to inhabit 'hell' as some kind of eternal consolation for the misery of one's own choice of hell. 

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^The other explanation for God in a pluralist universe is an infinite regress - i.e. that God the Father and Heavenly Mother are children of previous Gods, are children of previous Gods, and so on forever. But this amounts to the same thing as saying 'just there' - it is merely substituting a process which is 'just there' for entities which are 'just there'.

Try and see it from God's point of view...

That we should try and understand creation from God's point of view was a recurrent theme in the work of William Arkle - and one of the valuable things I got from reading him. 

In particular, I found it useful to consider why God created in the first place - what was God trying to achieve by it? 

But the imaginative exercise also highlights several vital metaphysical assumptions that must be made prior to the procedure. 

For instance; Christians know (or ought to know) that we are like God and God like us in some very fundamental ways - for instance, because Jesus (a Man) was fully divine, and because Men are described as Sons of God. 

It is this sameness of kind that makes it a valid exercise. 

If, on the other hand, we regard God as qualitatively different from us - than the exercise must be misleading. But then, it seems not to be Christian to insist on absolute difference. 

 

When we identify with God before creation, in broad terms God's motivator seems to be something-like loneliness; and God's overarching purpose seems to be to make companions... 

And the best possible companions are similar but not identical, free and agent 'divine friends' who are bound-together by love and a common (overall) purpose - for which we have the earthly-mortal analogy of the best kind of human family.

That is, 'creation' is about making individuals and situations, the-result-of-which is intended to be: more Beings of the same kind, and at 'the same level', as God. 

Also, we need to decide whether or not God was single and utterly alone before creation. 

And if not alone, then with whom? Another god or gods, presumably - by which I mean, others who are different/distinct Beings of the same kind and level.  

This is especially relevant because if God was a solitary god before creation; then He could not actually love until after he had created. 

This makes a big difference - because if God was initially alone, then embarking on creation seems likely to be necessarily of a self-gratifying, gratuitous, 'playful' and indeed experimental act - indeed this was how Arkle eventually seemed to regard it.  

(Arkle regarded god as initially one - then dividing into Heavenly Parents, and then further to procreate Jesus Christ, who contained both the male and female aspects.)

I have not thought-through the implications of multiple god; but my own conviction is that God's original situation was dyadic: a Heavenly Father and Mother. And it was from their mutual love that creation originated.  

In other words, before creation there was both the loneliness of Heavenly Parents as the only divine Beings; and also the experience hence knowledge of love, which pointed the way ahead to a creation of more-and-more divine Beings living (and creating) in a harmony rooted in love. 

A creation rooted in the experience of love is not gratuitous, nor a game; and is 'experimental' only in terms of creation being a trying-out of various means towards a known end.  

And such a creation is understood to be open-ended (endlessly expansible); because the more loving divine companions that eventuate: the better. Each - being different - adds to the totality ad potential of creation. 

Yet because all such divine companion Beings are harmonized by love; then there is no limit to how many can be integrated in the 'project' of creation. The more the better!

Mother-Father-Parents - developmental-evolution of the concept of God

(It seems that) In the developmental history of Men, there were three broad phases of how the ultimate deity was regarded: Orinially God as Mother; then - for most of recorded history - as Father; and - now and in the in future - Parents.

Hunter Gatherers seem to regard 'God' as (or, since it is not fully conscious or articulated, as if) a nurturing Mother; who provides all that is needed; and gives birth to all Beings. This goes with a passive and responsive attitude to the world - God as everywhere and Men as children.

Agricultural societies (and traditional sedentary societies - from at least Ancient Egypt until the Industrial Revolution in the West) generally have a masculine concept of God, or the supreme god; and this especially applies to monotheisms. This was the case for the early centuries of Christianity, and until the past several generations.This goes with a Kingly image of God, with religion as rituals and laws; and Men as subjects.

From the period of modernity (and especially since about 1800) I believe that the understanding of God is destined (supposed) to be as Heavenly Parents - Mother and Father in a celestial marriage, as a distinct but inseparable dyad - a polarity. This is - I think - the proper future and correct understanding of God: as Heavenly Parents.


This is explicit and officially sanctioned in the Restored Gospel of Mormonism, although in practice - so far - Mormonism has been as much (or more) Patriarchal as mainstream Christianity; and there is very little reference to Heavenly Mother or to the dyadic nature of God.

However, my interpretation of this, is that it is a temporary and merely-expedient distortion caused by the rise to dominance of materialist-leftist and socio-political feminism; which (as a strategy) tries to subvert the assumed male nature of real-God and replace it with an insincere female image of not-really-God (i.e. 'liberal Christianity' in its various forms).

Another distortion is the (only semi-serious, not truly lived-by) idea of restoring tribal ideas of God as Earth Mother - a pantheistic idea of non-purposive Goddess divinity; which owes much to an eclectic partial-assimilation of Hinduism and Buddhism. As well as being undesirable (an attempt to become spiritually children again); this is impossible due to the large changes in human and societal evolution: it just will not happen.  


Another distortion is the abstraction of God. Instead of regarding God as an incarnate person (of whom the resurrected Jesus was the filial image); the process began soon after the ascension of regarding the sex and personhood of God as childish anthropomorphism.

So we get the idea that God is not really either male or female, but both-or-neither. This leads to a sexless abstraction of God's person. And leads to the idea that the sex of mortal Men is just a temporary aspect of mortal life (just as mainstream Christians usually regard marriage as merely an expedient of mortal life, dissolved at death and without any equivalent in Heaven) - and that after death we will move-on to becoming de facto sexless.

(I regard this tendency to abstraction, sexlessness and not-incarnation of God, as the deep reason why mainstream Christians have found themselves unable coherently to defend real marriage against the mind-warping yet officially-mandatory literal-insanity that is SSM and the trans-agenda - and whatever is planned to come next...)


Anyway, to pull the argument together; my contention is that the truth and future of Christianity is to regard God as a dyad of Heavenly Parents - and to regard the sexes - man and woman - as ultimate, metaphysical realities, which underpin all of creation from eternity.

Two irreconcilable concepts of Heaven - Platonic and Pluralistic

The traditional, orthodox concept of Heaven derives from ancient Greek philosophy - I shall call it Platonic - this can be summarised:

God - Creation - Beings

The first thing is God, alone - who does Creation - and late in Creation God makes Beings, including Man.  

For Christians; God is a God of Love, whose creation is a kind of gratuitous overflow of love: so we get

God-Love - Creation - Beings


By contrast, what I will call the Pluralist concept of Heaven - which is the one I believe to be true - can be summarised:

Beings - Love - Creation

The primordial situation is of many Beings, of whom two are are Heavenly Parents - Father and Mother.

Thus God is Dyadic, irreducibly Two and not a unity (or, the unity is of two always-distinct aspects, permanently-made a unity by Love); and it is from the Love between our Heavenly Parents that Creation comes into existence (Love, being the coherence and purpose of Creation; Love harmonising the diverse elements of Creation). So we get:

Beings-God - Love - Creation


The Platonic Heaven seems to be associated with a wish for absolute, abstract, infinite perfection - and God is defined in such terms - including that God is undivided unity, of infinite power and presence (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent).

And this primal God creates everything else (everything other than God) from nothing (ex nihilo) instantaneously, in zero-Time (first Nothing, then Something... there can be no graduation or graduality) - including Beings, including Men.

In a Platonic Heaven, therefore, Creation remains entirely God's business, and nothing/ nobody else can contribute to primary Creation (only to secondary details within Creation). Also Heaven is perfect, so there is nothing for Men to contribute to it. Also primary Creation happens in zero-Time.

The Platonic Heaven is essentially contemplative: Man has nothing necessary or useful to Do. Man enjoys heaven, but does not add to it (because it is perfect). In Platonic Heaven; we may express gratitude, worship, may do many things - but none of them are necessary, none make any qualitative difference to Heaven.

In sum, the Platonic Heaven, is a state not a 'process'. It is a state of being, a state of communion with God, of bliss... but essentially it is static - there is no dynamic to Platonic Heaven - because movement comes from difference, from desire, from deficit... and this cannot be because the Platonic Heaven is perfection.   


In distinction, the Pluralistic Heaven in a world of Love, but not of perfection. Love is understood as itself dynamic ('in' Time: Time is a part of primary reality), between Beings; and therefore Heaven is a continuation of Creation - and for Christians it is a Heaven of active, personal participation in Creation.

This happens because Christians will be resurrected into Heaven, and resurrection is understood as becoming divine - immortal, indestructible, grown-up children of God. The actuality of God's primary Creation is opened-to the contributions of resurrected Men.

Part of pluralism is the uniqueness of each being, including of each man. Each resurrected Man brings to Heaven something unique, that did not previously exist in heaven. Every single individual Man who enters heaven therefore brings something irreplaceable to the ongoing Creation.

In sum everybody who is capable of Love and who chooses to follow Jesus, may be resurrected into heaven; and each such person has something unique and irreplaceable to contribute to God's ongoing work of Creation.

The Pluralistic Heaven is not only-contemplative (although contemplation is surely possible, and part of things) - but is active dynamic and open-endedly creative: a growing Heaven. And this Creation of Men is included in the primary and divine Creation.

Man's unique and individual contribution is woven-into Creation permanently, forever. And this is made possible by Love.

It is Love that harmonises God's creation with the contributions of many individual and unique Men - resurrected Men joining in increasing numbers with time.


The Pluralistic Heaven is not perfect, it is not closed, it is not complete, it is not outside Time... on the contrary Time (sequential, continuous, linear) is an assumed part of reality. The Pluralistic Heaven is, therefore, developing, open-ended, growing... Heaven is in-movement, is changing, has a past and a future; and changing, expanding personnel - each with an unique contribution to make to the whole. 


So, we can see that the Platonic Heaven and the Pluralistic Heaven are very different places. While one may be contained within the other - only one or the other (or neither) could ultimately be true - since they each have extremely different ultimate metaphysical assumptions. 

From why one God? to why Jesus? - some short answers to think-about

1. Why one god?

Because, if there is a single source of all creation (or, all order) then there is unity of reality. And unity of reality is necessary for real objective understanding.

In fact there does not need to be one god, but one source: God*.

2. Why God the Father?

Because this explains why God is concerned with us, as individuals - out of the whole of reality. We are God's children; and like mortal children it is the hope and destiny we grow up to become of the same 'kind' as our Heavenly Father.

3. Why a God of Love?

Because otherwise, even if we were His children, we could not assume that God's intentions were benign and there would be no reason to go along with God's intentions. It is only a Loving Father whose plans we would wish to assent to.

4.  Why mortal earthly life?

This life is mixed, full of change and decay and also love and hope. Mortal life seems insignificant in an eternal perspective, yet feels overwhelmingly significant in the here and now. There must be some benefit from mortal life, or else a loving creator Father would not have made the situation; yet death puts an end to all benefit we might gain from living, and our Father also made death...

Therefore, we infer mortal life is necessary and death is necessary; both necessary, that is, for God's hopes and plans.

5. Why Christ?

Because death is necessary - yet death is the end. We need to die; and Christ is our Saviour from death.

6. Why Jesus? 

Because Jesus is our brother; therefore he both shows us the way, and by preceding us makes that way so we can follow.

*For Mormons the unity of a single God is not that of a single being or entity; but a single, inseparably unified but eternally dyadic creative-marriage of Heavenly Father and Mother. So mono-theism (one god-personage) is not entailed - but one divine-source is.  

The basic components of reality - the 'back story' to Mormon cosmology

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I find that my compulsive philosophizing has generated a fairly complex schema to account for what I regard as the major facts of existence: the basic components of reality.

In a nutshell I am trying to explain Mormon cosmology here: I am trying to flesh-out the 'back story'.

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Initially there is matter, laws of nature - including moral laws, there is God (the Father) (and perhaps a Heavenly Mother, I'm not sure: either God is the one entity without sex, or the duality and incompleteness of sex are universal facts, and the basis of all action and movement and purpose)

...and there are individual (but not personalized) essences of agency, which are differentiated by sex (i.e. male and female agents).

At this point in history, only God has agency and free will - plus many other great primordial powers and attributes.

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That is the set-up. The assumptions. This is what JUST IS.

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So we have an eternal pre-existence, eternal autonomy as pre-persons - but at that point we had no self-awareness, and no capacity for free will - no capacity to act.

God wanted to have children, he wanted to raise-up these children to become friends, eternal companions, allies in living...

Why? Either because he was alone and lonely; or because he was an incomplete half and eternally accompanied by a Heavenly Mother - such that the basic dynamic of the universe is to seek completeness in celestial marriage and the loving company of children, and therefore to raise these children to the same maturity as their parents.

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When we became children of our Heavenly Father, our agency was additionally endowed with conscious self-awareness and the capacity to choose and act - free will.

At that point we became disembodied spirits (spirit children)

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So we began as an eternally pre-existent, unaware, tiny and helpless, but autonomous, individual flame; to which (at some point in time) God added the divine flame with consciousness and the ability to act - and we embarked upon a spiritual existence.

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When we chose to come to earth and live this mortal and incarnate life, we did this by earthly parents - so as we are born as mortals we have three sources of 'fire':

1. The individual eternal flame of agency. Unique to us.

(This is the reason why we have genuine and inviolable autonomy and are not merely aspects of God. This is why we are of the same kind as God - we share this basis. )

2. The divine flame - shared with God and with all God's children. This is the reason why all Men are brothers and sisters.

3. A family flame, blended from the individual flames of our earthly parents. 

To this is added personal experience, as a consequence of our choices, the choices of others, and the 'physical' constraints of earthly life.

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So we are compounded of these - we are unique individuals, and we are embedded in relationships as Sons and Daughters of God, Family members, and a product of our choices and chances including friendships and broader human society (maybe Churches).

Our purpose is theosis, to become like God: starting from our shared essence with God to build upon this and to progress through incremental stages of learning and experience; we are now in the midst of this process - being incarnate mortals with avast history behind us including pre-mortal spiritual existence - and an eternity before us of post-mortal first spiritual then resurrected existence.

And this process is foundationally relational, although we are indeed individuals and intriniscally different from every other individual - we are embedded in relationships: the relationships by virtue of sharing in the status of being God's children, and also additional between-human family relationships.

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More than this, the very movement, purpose and direction of reality depends upon sexual differentiation - upon there being men and women neither of whom are complete humans: the only complete human is a man and woman united, eternally sealed, but this unity is internally structured: is of its nature both dyadic and dynamic.

Sexuality and its union in marriage, and its seeking fulfilment in children and families bound by love, is what makes the universe go.

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The Law of Direct Knowing: or, why book recommendations are (mostly) useless and best-friends non-transferable

Have you ever noticed, as I did even in my teens, that your best-friend's other best friends were usually people you found to be distinctly... underwhelming. Sometimes, I even disliked them. And my own best friends often did not get-along very well - lacking any genuine affinity. 

This might be supposed to be due to jealousy, or that that each friend represented a different aspect in me; but I think the reason runs deeper.

Something similar applies with authors that I regard as mentors; my absolute favourite writers: those with whom I had a strong relationship, and whose influence on me has been significant. 

It is natural to seek further such mentors by tackling those who my favorite author regarded as his favourite authors... 

Yet this was typically a blind alley. No matter how deeply I admired and empathized with writer X; I nearly always discovered writer X's favourite, most significant, influences were disappointing; and often completely unappealing.

Furthermore, books recommended me by friends who liked the same things as I did, were often duds; and my own recommendations of the "you will love this" type, typically fell upon stony ground. 

The same applies with classical music, and indeed folk music - an exploration of the "influences" behind my favourite artistes and composers was almost uniformly unsatisfying.     

Such instances can be put-together; and a lesson drawn from them to make a kind of law: The Law of Direct Knowing.  

This is: We can only truly-know a person or personage in a direct and dyadic fashion.

We can - in other words - only truly know in terms of a meeting of just-two minds; and this applies whether in everyday-life or in our intense imaginative thinking-life. 

Thus; friendship and influence must alike be directly inter-personal - without any degrees of separation. 

Indeed; it strikes me that with the Law of Direct Knowing we are perhaps confronted here by a fundamental principle of divine creation - because (as I understand it) creation is rooted in love: and, more exactly, in dyadic love - love between "twos".

Love is both what holds-creation-together; and what gives creation its dynamism: its motivation and direction. 

Creation originated (I believe) in the love of our Heavenly Parents to constitute that which we term God; and divine creation began with God's love of all the Beings of reality - each individually relating back to God, via love, in a dyadic fashion. 

Creation then proceeds by multiple (and overlapping, interlocking) instances of dyadic love between the Beings of divine creation - to make the whole of creation bound and motivated by many mutual links.

What this means is that our evanescent mundane love/ relationships are -- in their partial and often temporary ways; and while continually being un-done by the depredations of entropy and the motivations of evil -- instances of that "power of love" which make creation. 

This mortal world is therefore a dynamic equilibrium - which may be strengthening or else falling-apart, at various scales - between the binding and creative powers of love - and that-which opposes love.  

And (at least, for Christians) Heaven can be understood as the place where such dyadic relations are permanent and pure in their nature - such that creation becomes wholly positive and progressive...

So that more-and-more of Heaven, is always being bound more-and-more strongly, by the direct knowing of dyadic love. 

 

The Dyadic Holy Ghost

Since I regard God the Creator as dyadic, our Heavenly Parents, Father and Mother (actual, and presumably eternally incarnate, persons)...

And since I regard Jesus Christ's marriage to Mary of Bethany (Mary Magdalene) as a vital and transformative aspect of His work of the Second Creation...

Then it seems to follow - and has a intuitive rightness - that the Holy Ghost is also dyadic, and a consequence of the eternal commitment of Jesus and Mary in love (their "celestial marriage"). 

I think this is necessary because ultimate creativity comes from the eternal dyadic love of our Heavenly Parents (that is, the concept of creation includes (and/or arises from) love, as it includes freedom and agency - as distinguishable but inseparable aspects).  

Thus the Holy Ghost is both guide and teacher, and comforter; and it may be that these aspects reflect Jesus Christ the man and Mary Magdalene the woman; after their death, resurrection and ascension. 

In other words (bearing in mind these are emphases, not separate domains), the main theme of Jesus Christ in the Holy Ghost is to contribute discernment and purpose in a long-term, strategic way; while Mary contributes immediate help, here and now, in a tactical way. 

Jesus shows us the path, Mary keeps us upon it. 

Of course this cannot (even in principle!) be proved from the Gospels; yet the account of Mary in the Fourth Gospel strikes me as compatible by what I have just said - and from other traditions in Christianity. 

By my understanding, Mary Magdalene makes five appearances in the The Fourth Gospel: 1, implicitly in Jesus's Marriage at Cana (a passage that seems clearly tampered-with, including by deletions), in the resurrection of Lazarus (Mary's brother), the episode of the ointment on Jesus's feet in Bethany, at the foot of the cross and after Jesus's resurrection. 

Mary's concerns in the latter four episodes are very immediate, supportive, "caring" - and indeed it seems possible that Mary had a role in the resurrection of Jesus in a way analogous to John the Baptist's role in the divine but mortal transformation of the pre-baptism Jesus into Jesus Christ*. 

I get this from the hints contained in the reported conversation between the resurrected Jesus, and Mary, when she was the first to meet Jesus after his death, thus.

John 20: 14... she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. [15] Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. [16] Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. [17] Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.  

It strikes me that Jesus may here be talking of their future eternal union - to include the spiritual emanation of the Holy Ghost, available to all who follow Jesus - to happen (only) after Mary's death and resurrection. 

In very general terms - to include Mary Magdalene/ of Bethany in the Holy Ghost is a further development and explication of the deadly rejection of the feminine that afflicted Christianity from early-on (and which I blame of the monotheist philosophers who captures and continue to torment Christin theology!)

The progressively increasing emphasis on Mary the mother of Jesus in Catholic practice, I take to be a theologically-distorted - but nonetheless spiritually very valuable - manifestation of the reality of Heavenly Mother, and the wife of Jesus Christ. 

The fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary is mainly called-upon for aid and comfort in the difficulties of everyday living, fits with my understanding of the role of the divine feminine in general, and Mary Magdalene in her marriage-into the Holy Ghost specifically.   

Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, rediscovered the Christian feminine in God; but the CJCLDS have since neglected and suppressed this aspect of Joseph's revelation - and have chosen not to develop it, while never denying it. 

I am strongly of the view that an explicit inclusion of Heavenly Mother in the fundamental concept of God; and probably too a personal womanly aspect of the Holy Ghost; has (belatedly) become an all-but essential quest or project - for us, here and now. 

This is not something Christians can get off-the-peg or from any external source; but something each needs to work-through for himself - by the usual external and internal means of spiritual guidance. 

*Note added: This is easily (negatively or positively) misinterpreted in terms of divided stereotypical sex roles. I mean much more and almost the opposite; which is that the dyad of a man and woman eternally co-committed in love, can do something that neither can do alone - or, at least, one person can do less, and less well. That is something like a harmony of strategic purposive wisdom with immediate help. By analogy (very approximate) it is a bit like the benefit of being loved and looked-after by two people, a man and a woman, each with distinctive perspectives and capacities, eternally combined in love; who completely share divine purposes and method. This would be better than any conceivable single person, with only a single perspective and vision. That this is two persons creates and sustains a dynamic and growing aspect to the situation - whereas a single person would tend towards inertia and stasis. That this is two persons, rather than more than two, should be seen as an extra gift and potentiality added to the situation of single person - rather than a limitation.   

"Masculinity" and "femininity" versus the actual person of Mother in Heaven

While I assume that God is Dyadic (a Heavenly Father and Mother) - this is something I have not really grasped, not does it correspond much with daily experience. 

Partly this may be because we Christians are intended to relate primarily to Jesus, rather than the primary creator; but partly it is because I tend to get "hung-up" on inaccurate and unhelpful assumptions relating to principles, rather than persons. 

An example of an unhelpful/ misleading conceptualization would be that of Coleridge's "polarity" between "two contrary forces, the one of which tends to expand infinitely ["masculine], while the other strives to apprehend or find itself in this infinity [feminine]". 

One such assumption is that habit of thinking of male and female in terms of being specific exemplifications of those abstractions: "masculinity" and "femininity"... Abstractions that are somehow floating unattached beyond time and space, and sort-of imposing-themselves-upon Beings (as it were to make them men, or women)...! 

Really; things must be otherwise. 

Our Heavenly Parents are those two Beings who (in actuality, not by any prior necessity) first committed to eternal love; and on that basis began divine creation. 

It is their two natures, originating as two Beings, that ramify through all of creation since.  

Thus male and female both structure and power creation; but in this personal way - derived from actual living, conscious, developing Beings; and not therefore in terms of abstract metaphysical forces or fields or tendencies. 

As (always?) with metaphysical realities, it is not possible to derive the metaphysics from empirical specifics (such as actual men and women) - nor is it possible to derive any particular empirical specifics from the metaphysical assumptions. 

If the universe truly is derived from a dyadic God; then that universe includes everything that exists, has existed, or could exist - and this reality (this Primary Creation) in which we dwell; includes not just divine creation, but also entropy/death and purposive evil. 

What this seems to mean - among many other things! - is that our experience of Mother in Heaven ought not to be pre-conceptualized in terms of an ideal earthly-mortal Mother, nor any other archetypal female conceptualization. 

Of course, if that is what we have decided in advance that we will find, then that is what we will find - and any female archetype really is there; but only as a selective, hence distorted, part of the reality. 

This stricture applies both to Goddess conceptualizations; and to the Blessed Virgin Mary - whom I regard as ultimately a selective and distorted representation of the reality of the actual person of Mother in Heaven.

(Albeit the veneration/worship of the Mary, Mother of Jesus has - in some times and places - been very valuable as such; and IMO far preferable overall to an exclusively "masculine" conceptualization of God.)

I think the difficulties of you and I experiencing the person of Mother in Heaven are therefore partly due to the nature of God the Creator - who is not personal in this world, in the way that Jesus Christ is personal; partly it is due to the ultimately-dyadic nature of God (and the consequent difficulty of disambiguating Father and Mother, who are necessarily participating-in each-other); and partly due to our usually false expectations concerning what She is like.   

So, what is She like? 

The best answer is: She is like who-She-is. 

...Which can be known - as here on earth - by personal experience, by getting-to-know a person. 

But She is not to be known in terms of exemplifying a list of supposed-female attributes, nor can any list of attributes validly communicate her reality.

What is the ultimate role of 'the feminine' in divine creation?

Many writers on theology (in many religions, including Christianity) believe that the masculine principle is primary in divine creation; the feminine being secondary, or perhaps inessential.  

Or else, they believe that such sexual differentiation is superficial, and that primarily/ originally there is no sex, no masculine or feminine - but a single creative principle that includes both. 

Others believe that sex is merely an earthly and mortal accident or expedient; and that the highest form of after-life entails loss of sexual differentiation (either as spirit, or as resurrected Man). 

But I regard God as a loving dyad of man and woman, masculine and feminine; and that original divine creation comes from this creative love. 

This dyadic quality is not a matter of 'equality' - it is simply that both man and woman are the actual basis of this divine creation that we all inhabit. 

A man and woman, who are coherent on the basis of love, were and are the true spiritual 'unit' of both divine and human creativity: thus God (the prime creator) is a Heavenly Father and Mother - both. 

The destiny of individual mortal men and women is a different question. Each person's mortal and resurrected destiny is unique - and we are not supposed to conform to a template, not be poured-into a standard human (or male, or female) mould. Love of God first, and fellow Man second, is mandatory for salvation - because only such persons want Heaven. 

Thus woman/ the feminine is Not subordinate to man/ masculine - both are absolutely spiritually necessary; just as (by analogy) both have been necessary for reproduction in this mortal life. 

We were not originally, nor will we ultimately become, de-sexed or a single sex. The dyad goes 'all the way down' to before creation; because dyadic love was what made creation possible. 

Ultimately; in absence of both - there cannot be love, therefore no real creation nor creativity. 

How do I 'know' this? Simply by having formulated the question; after which it 'answered itself' as these things do. I other words by 'intuition', by direct knowing. 

By contrast, when I asked other questions, when I formulated my understanding in other ways; I came up with answers that did not suffice - as became clear after a while.

This is not the kind of thing that anyone should accept from external sources - not from me, nor anybody else, nor institutions. 

We are supposed-to discern such matter for ourselves - and there is no substitute for this conscious choice. 

(Probably, it was not always thus - at times and among some peoples, it was right that Men be ruled spiritually by their environment or society or church - but here-and-now we must choose consciously.)

To know-for-ourselves, from experience, the nature and motivation of God is perhaps the primary task of Man here and now; given that almost-all external sources of such 'information' are deeply corrupted. 

At the very least, we need to exercise experiential direct personal discernment in relation to the external sources that we choose to accept as authoritative; for instance, choosing a denomination and church; and then choosing-between the conflicting views emanating from denominations and churches. The requirement for each individual person to discern is unavoidable. 

Having gone through this process of discernment - rooted in formulating a question such that the answer is coherently self-validating in ones actual and examined life - I don't really care what 'other people' say about the problem - and certainly will not abandon my direct knowledge of such matters on the basis of people pointing at 'authorities' whose authority to determine my spiritual life I do not acknowledge!

Others should do likewise. 

And what if/ when they come up with 'a different answer? What then?

What then depends upon each individual for himself or herself. Group-orientated policies and behavioural/ belief compulsions can have nothing to do with such matters. 

But whatever happens in each mortal life, we certainly should not attempt to avoid personal responsibility for deciding upon such matters. Salvation is between each Man and God (God would not have it otherwise!); and 'my' salvation depends on 'me' discerning the nature and motivation of God. 

The marvellous originality and profundity of the Mormon theology of eternal marriage

I have given-up on trying to persuade others of the wonders of Mormon theology! Instead, I will here merely vent some of my enthusiasm. 

Even Mormons regard their theology as very-much subordinate to specifics of this world practice in the CJCLDS. 

And hardly anybody else outside the CJCLDS (although, a few!) is sufficiently interested even to engage with the subject - often because of ineradicable ignorant hostile prejudice. 

But for me, I don't know that I have come across any richer source of metaphysical originality and genius across the span of Christendom, as in Mormon theology*. 

One of the greatest insights of Mormon theology was that God (The Creator) is the eternal and loving marriage of Father in Heaven and Mother in Heaven; in other words God is a dyad, not one. 

Properly understood and explored; this can be an astonishingly rich insight into the fundamental nature of reality - transcending centuries, indeed millennia, of false antitheses between monotheism and polytheism. 

The Mormon concept of God can be the basis of a positive metaphysical concept in its own right (not some combination or compromise of pre-existing concepts); as such, it needs to be understood in its own right. 

The Mormon church (the CJCLDS) has confused and distorted matters - in this as in several other ways - by claiming that such eternal "sealed" marriage is possible among mortal men and women, here on earth; and restricted to the administration and approval of the CJCLDS. 

This is understandable, perhaps it is and was inevitable - yet we must distinguish the reality and truth of things, as separable from the compromises and practicalities of organizing and maintaining A Church, in this world. 

But this is not merely something that demonstrably fails in practice (since many sealed marriages have ended in divorce); but is clearly impossible in theory, due to the basic nature of human beings and our life in this entropic and evil world. 

The basic nature of this mortal life cannot be transcended by mortal Men - and the fact of Men organizing into churches. 

Making claims of the church's transcendent power, or that church rules for living are mapped onto post-mortal and heavenly realities, are simply false - because they contradict the nature of this-world; and contradict too the whole rationale of Christianity as entailing death and resurrection. 

We cannot make Heaven on earth - else there would be no need for Heaven.

(And Jesus Christ insisted that there was need for Heaven, and by his work showed why and how.) 

We cannot replicate the eternal realities of Heaven with our mortal minds and bodies - and claiming that we can, acts against the core realities of what Jesus did and why. 

Churches - and their rules and rituals - do not control our access to Heaven; and indeed, the behaviours of church members (since 2020, especially) demonstrates that nobody really believes that they do. 

(They are merely too concerned at the implications of acknowledging they don't believe - which double-negative is not the same as - and much weaker than - positive belief. )

So, to understand the profound truth of the Mormon theology of God, requires that Mormons (as well as other Christians) set-aside the confusions related to how such spiritual realities are crystallized into material and mortal terms here in our lives on earth. 

Yet, our aspirations can and should be heavenly and spiritual - even as we acknowledge that their practice is mortal and corruptible (not just corruptible, but actually inevitably corrupt-ed - to some degree, sooner or later - by entropy and death - even when not by evil). 

(Thus the desire and aspiration towards eternal marriage in the Mormon sense is a new (as of 1830) beautiful and life-enhancing one - and a vital corrective to the destructive (indeed nihilistic) "mainstream" Christian doctrine that marriage is necessarily a temporary expedient that is dissolved by death, combined with the assertion that "there is no marrying in Heaven".) 

This aspiration is true and good; although eternal marriage cannot be actually attained until after we are resurrected and have become wholly and eternally committed to live by love. 

It requires resurrection to be able to make eternal commitments; for the reason that resurrection is itself the foundational eternal commitment - i.e. to live wholly by live (and leave-behind sin). 

Earthly marriage, and the innate desires and motivations we have in relation to it - even when we may be unable to find it during this mortal existence, provide the basis for understanding the reality of Heavenly marriage; and of the original, originative, creative nature of God (originating, that is, in love - with creation, including but not restricted to procreation, understood as a manifestation of love.)

When Joseph Smith had his vision of the dyadic nature of God, he was both a prophet and a philosopher of genius; but when he tried to make this vision a concrete reality among the members of the new Mormon church, he was merely a gifted and able leader, a kind of "king and judge" perhaps. 

Furthermore, the nature of God as from a Heavenly marriage need not be, and I think is not, a template for every man and woman - past, present and future. 

Christianity is for individual persons, and entails that each individual person affiliates to divine creation; I don't see that this entails that everybody ultimately wants the same thing - indeed that would seem vanishingly unlikely. Since each is unique - surely there will "always" be genuine exceptions? 

(As well as those making excuses to justify special treatment!) 

And what we be the point of a creation consisting of everybody doing the same thing! Multiplicity would then have no function or reason!

Another of Joseph Smith's great prophetic insights was that Heaven was A Family, in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. And a loving family - even here on earth - can and often does incorporate many kinds of life-motivations and self-chosen roles, among its loving members. 

Resurrected and eternal individual men and women will develop what is distinctive in their original and innate nature - and this may or may not lead them into eternal marriage of a kind analogous to that of God, our Heavenly Parents and the Primary Creators, and thence to procreating spiritual children - in the way that Joseph Smith seemed to regard as the proper goal of all people. 

I include this, not because I am necessarily correct in contradicting this particular aspect of Joseph Smith's revelations - but as example fo how we ought to engage with them, as realities.

Realities we may know-about now, and experience temporarily and partially in mortal life; but realities that are only do-able in resurrected post-mortal life    

 

*For all its essential insights (at least, they have been essential for me) there are significant deficiencies in Mormon theology. Two of the most important are an incoherent and double-negative understanding of Jesus's real vital importance and the true nature of his work, which error was (apparently) inherited from mainstream Protestant theology. Another mistake - I believe - is also inherited; which is to regard the Holy Ghost as a separate personage from Jesus Christ - which (as with mainstream Christianity) makes the HG into a nebulous abstract entity with no clear provenance or role. 

God and sexual morality

Some people - most modern people, apparently - say that find it hard to believe that God - or, at least, the Christian God of Love - would exclude certain sexual behaviours, acts and identifications: would regard them as sins.

This labelling of sin seems to them arbitrary and unbalanced... it can indeed be made to sound ridiculous, to the point that through the twentieth century official public sexual morality was first - but only very briefly - made 'free', then now it has been inverted, with the 'normal', natural and traditionally Christian sex and sexuality becoming the problem; precisely because Christianity regards some acts and attitudes as sins... 

Of course, this whole matter hinges on the reality and nature of sin; and public discourse has long since regarded sin as unreal (arbitrary, artificially defined and open-endedly subject to re-definition) and has degraded the concept of sin to the point of ridiculousness - or indeed evil. The major modern moral inversion is that those who believe in the reality of sin are regarded as the ones who are evil.

Those who advocate what used to be (not long ago) regarded as sexual sin are nowadays treated as the virtuous ones and rewarded with praise and status (and material goods!) both by official culture and the mass media - they apparently 'solve' the problem of sin by dissolving the concept of sin and making it a matter of personal preference and freedom and the sacred pursuit of happiness. So long as the consequences of some behaiour can be portrayed (in official and media sources) as potentially happy, self-respecting, and kind - then that is taken to be the proof of rightness.

(And any contradictory evidence of consequent misery, suffering, despair following sin... is blamed upon those who 'label' the behaviour as sin. Essentially, this is Catch 22 in reverse!) 

At any rate, in a world of establishment and counter-cultural moral inversion - to focus on the sin of acts and behaviours has become counter-productive - even when true. I think the key to a response is regarding morality positively, as what God most wants us to do.

*

This differs among Christian churches - which is a source of weakness that has been exploited - but for the CJCLDS it is clear from multiple revelations and the teaching of living prophets that God most wants us to marry (I mean really marry, with a person of the opposite sex), stay married, have children, and live in loving families.

For Mormon believers, the primacy of marriage and family is not some bit of moral teaching 'parachuted' in from above, but something built-in from the ground upwards; from the basic metaphysical understanding of reality: the 'whole' human is ultimately (at some point, perhaps extremely remote, in post-mortal life, when Man has progressed to the fullest divinity) a complementary, irreducibly dyadic combination of an exalted man and a woman bound together by love.

'Celestial marriage' is the aim, and it is the completion, of Man.

This is the clear ideal - and this is what is taught, supported, worked-towards...

Now, there is compassion and help for those (which may be a majority) who for a multitude of individual reasons of many types, cannot do all of this (or indeed any of it) during this mortal life - and there is therefore a second strand of the ideal life of celibacy - it seems that this may be part of God's plan for some individuals during this mortal life, if not eternally.

There is of course the significant matter than the great majority of people will fail to live perfectly by the ideal; they will probably fail many times, in many ways both great and small, and they may not be able to stop failing. These are not 'damned' nor lost to salvation but they are required to 'repent' - i.e. required to acknowledge the ideal and their failure to attain it.

(And not, for example, to say that their failure is actually success; especially not to assert it is a superior kind of success: which is the norm in modern public discourse.)

But it is forbidden to argue and teach that 'other sexual ways' (of any kind) are either equal or superior to that which God has clearly said is the ideal. Anything other than the ideal must be acknowledged as sub-optimal.

The serious sin is not so much in doing otherwise than the ideal, but in assuming or arguing otherwise, or saying that sex and sexuality 'don't matter'; in making laws and regulations on that basis, or in failing to repent (i.e. acknowledge the sub-optimality of) other behaviours. 

*

I think that sexuality (in our era) shows clearly the two somewhat different requirements for public and private morality. Public morality (as a part of 'politics' - law, regulations, economic incentives etc.) must be, can only be, simple and clear.

If morality is not presented simply and clearly, then it will in practice be interpreted in a simple and clear way - whether we like it or not.

So public morality will always be simplistic and harsh - just as is our current politically correct morality simplistic and harsh, but in an inverted way than the past. And it is the job of individuals to soften and nuance this simplicity and harshness when appropriate, in individual instance, based upon wise judgement and not on rules.

We cannot expect, and we will not get, perfection in attitudes, justice or anything else - there will always be a bias, and we must make a choice of which direction 'the system' is biased towards: morality (as in the past) or anti-morality (as at present). 

*

For Christians there is the 'problem' of being strong and able to resist being swept into secularism, while remaining compassionate and empathic.

There is no rule for this - but some types of strong Christianity are brittle and if they yield an inch they seem to collapse altogether; while other types seem to be able to be strong without harshness or encouraging hate: strong in will but soft and warm in heart.

I think this ideal of strong-and-loving, tough-and-soft, clear-and-warm... is made easier by regarding sin as failure to live by the ideal, rather than in terms of specific acts and attitudes being sinful in and of themselves.

What has made the modern sexual revolution such a devastating anti-Christian force is that it has managed to reduce sex and sexuality to be considered as discrete and detached acts, which seem trivial and arbitrary, and therefore not the kind of thing to have eternal significance.

Christians should not fall into this prepared trap - but try to make clear (not least to ourselves) that sexual sin is mostly a matter of failing to live by divinely ordained sexual ideals; but this failure is not of itelf the major problem in modern life: the major problem of modern life is denying the truth that God does have a plan, an ideal, for human sexuality and sexual life; and that we know (because we have been clearly told) the basic structure of this plan - and that when we (so often ) fail to live by the plan, we muct acknowledge ('repent') these failures.


**
But if you don't know, here it is:
https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng

Jesus before he was born

At this time of year, it is natural for me to think about the birth of Jesus; and that leads back to Jesus before he was born, in his pre-mortal spirit life.

As I understand things; Jesus was the only pre-mortal Man who was wholly-aligned with the will of God. Why this should be, I don't know - and it may not have an explanation. The idea is that Jesus was (in some sense, presumably including - but not confined to - the literal) the first-born of the children of God; but that in itself does not tell us why he was unique.

What is it that makes a person's will aligned with that of God? The answer is love - so we can infer that Jesus loved God such that there was an absolute harmony between them - and that no other pre-mortal Man did so; and no other could be Saviour.


Hence Jesus, and only Jesus, was co-creator of this world (as described in the early verses of the Fourth Gospel). Co-creation is only possible when love ensures a harmony; only in that way may two or many parties may contribute to a single (harmonious) creation - genuine independence of self-creation is made compatible with the coherence of all that which is created.

(Sin is lack of love, lack of alignment; such that this harmony is prevented; sin is also the state of labile mortality - and full co-creation is only possible between immortal persons, whose love is everlasting - not mortal.)

The Messiah was both co-creator, and future Saviour - by 'saviour' was meant that he was the only means by which other Men could attain to resurrected everlasting life; and full divinity.


Yet, although co-creator, the pre-mortal Jesus was nonetheless in a vital sense incomplete because immature - he lacked that final development which was provided by his incarnation, death and resurrection; and only after this completion could Jesus ascend to Heaven and take up full divinity.

When Jesus was born, this was his history. At birth and for (apparently) thirty years, Jesus was unique in his love of God, but otherwise an ordinary Man - except for his covert destiny. It was only after the baptism by John that the incarnated Jesus assumed divine power - fully divine in power but a mortal Man.

At this point, I think Jesus had done his work of salvation for Men - as evidenced by the resurrection of Lazarus. And the completion of Jesus's development - to immortality and full divinity - was attained via his own death and resurrection.

Thus Jesus became as his Father; a full creator, capable of making worlds and procreating spirit children.


Note: For simplicity, above I have left-out the role of celestial marriage and the dyadic love between man and woman which was the basis of the creation by our Heavenly Parents (i.e. God); and that the resurrected Jesus would likewise marry an eternal resurrected woman in order to attain full creative divinity - the first stage being enacted during his mortality, with Mary Magdalene (of Bethany) as described in the Fourth Gospel.

Positive and Negative theology

I first came across the idea of a Positive (as well as a Negative) Christian theology in the writings of Charles Williams - he also called it Romantic Theology and the Via Affirmativa or the path of affirmation of images. The general idea was that Christian theology had typically been a path of negation, denial, asceticism, celibacy - but that there was also a (neglected) path focused on romantic love, art and poetry, richness of imagery etc. Williams regarded these as equal alternatives.

But it is hard to see how they could be equal, since they are so different - alternatives, yes, but in real life one or other of such vastly different paths is surely to be preferred; one or another must become the focus of societal aspiration and organization - one cannot aim both at being a celibate, solitary ascetic hermit or monk; and also at being a husband and father engaged with 'the world'.

Charles Williams knew (so far as I can find) nothing about Mormonism - and he would likely have found it to be boring or unpleasant if he had known anything - but Mormonism has for a long time been advocating and practicing something pretty close to Positive Theology: a Christian 'way' focused on marriage, family and engagement; and with no tradition of monasticism or the eremitic (reclusive) life.


Fundamentally I believe there are very different aspects of human psychology at work behind the positive and negative paths. The negative path aims at the relief of suffering, and the positive path at making life more fulfilling.

To feel the desire for the Christian negative path seems to me a desire to escape the sufferings of this world and live, instead, in a state of static bliss - absorbed in a permanent communion with God (who is, in essence, an abstract entity about which nothing positive may be asserted): doing nothing, simply being.

In the negative path, Love is seen as a sameness, a fusion of wills, the loss of barriers and all strangeness.

And there is no sex - indeed there are no sexes: maleness and femaleness are lost.


To desire the positive path is to wish that the best things in life be amplified and sustained - it also stems from the concern that static bliss would (sooner or later) become boring; and the conviction that the only thing which is not, ultimately, boring is actual, real, other-persons.

The dyadic goal of Mormon salvation can be seen in this light - the ultimate bliss is not the state of an individual soul in permanent communion with God, it is a man and woman in a permanent and divine Loving relationship at the centre of a network of loving relationships including God the Father and Jesus Christ (who are solid persons).

The difference between this version of the positive ideal and the negative ideal is profound - because in a permanent and eternal dyadic and sexual relationship between husband and wife, there would not be a desire for fusion and sameness but rather a delight in fundamental and complementary difference.


Sexual difference, and sexuality, both entail difference - a you and a me: not communion nor fusion nor loss of self nor consciousness. Instead a perpetual delight that 'we' are not the same, but 'fit together'. There needs to be the perpetual possibility of being delight-fully surprised; which means that there can never be full communion. Indeed if communion is full, it renders void the separateness and necessity of the dyad.

If a husband and wife become one, they stop being husband and wife.

There is indeed a desire for surprise, for open-ended possibilities. Once static bliss is put aside as a goal; it becomes essential that eternal life be interesting, rewarding, creative and (in some sense) progressive or evolutionary - changing, growing, developing without end-point or end. Otherwise - if life were static, or merely cyclical - it would become predictable and boring, and we would prefer a state of blissful loss of self.


It seems to me that Heaven must either be mostly like either the Negative or Positive ideal and that God would have a preference between these goals for Man - but I do not see why Heaven would have to be exclusively the one or the other.

So I see the Positive Way as primary, and God's first wish for us, and the basis upon which eternal life and Heaven are organized. But I see the Negative Way as an option available (on Earth and in Heaven) to those who - more than anything - wish to escape from suffering and hope to lose-them-selves in blissful communion with the divine.


Note added: Charles Williams descriptions of Positive Theology are at least difficult to understand, and probably fundamentally incoherent - this is because Positive Theology is metaphysically Pluralist - or at least implies this; while Charles Williams was very much a Monist who sought always to reduce apparent dichotomies (e.g. Good and evil) to unity.

If relationship is an ultimate goal and possibility, then there must be at least two irreducible entities to have the relationship - because if Man and Woman can be reduced to one, and Man with God can be reduced to one, then reality is One; and Positive Theology merely an indirect and off-route means to the same end as that which Negative Theology aims-at directly: viz oneness.

So Mormons - as pluralists - are the true Romantic theologians; and Charles Williams is fundamentally and ineradicably confused!

Married relationships - Patriarchy, Feminism or Dyadic (the Mormon experience)

Yesterday I was re-reading this-blog commenter 'Lucinda's excellent 2015 article from the Mormon Blog - Millenial Star. I certainly agree with the substance of what Lucinda says, but I noticed that there was a 'hang-up' in the comments about nomenclature.

For example, disputes about about the 'real meaning of Patriarchy; or (elsewhere) I have seem 'complementary' used as a synonym for 'de facto feminism'. I don't intend to quibble over this - but will make my meaning of these and other terms clear, as we proceed.

My general stance is that there was a long history of Patriarchy in human society, but around about 1800 there was a change in Western human consciousness (or human instincts) concerning the ideal way that men and women ought to relate - particularly in marriage.

This was a part of the Romantic movement in thought - and I regard Joseph Smith and the Latter Day Saints (beginning with the production of the Book of Mormon and the formation of what became the CJCLDS in 1830) as part of this Romantic movement.

My belief is that this Romantic movement in thought ought to have led to a new kind of dyadic (or complementary - in the original sense of that word) relationship between men and women. Mormonism bases this upon the solid metaphysical assumption that men and women are incomplete parts of the 'whole' human being; and that the divine ideal of the complete (i.e. fully divine) Man is a 'celestial' (i.e. dyadic and eternal) marriage of a man and woman.

This divine idea, then, ought to be reflected in our earthly ideals. However this has not yet happened.

In mainstream secular Western culture, we have instead had materialistic feminism; which is an incoherent, Leftist (hence destructive, evil motivated) perversion of the truth of the underlying spiritual ideal. Yes, we had the impulse for a New relation between men and women; but No - not feminism - which foments perpetual resentment and (even pragmatically) simply does not work. So not feminism - then what?  

What of Mormonism? My interpretation is that Mormonism was diverted by adverse circumstances first briefly into polygamy under Joseph Smith (multiple spiritual, not physical, spouses for men and women - intended to bind the Saints into a single extended family); then (under Brigham Young) into several decades of Patriarchal polygyny (plural wives for the senior Mormons) - and from about 1900 the current pattern of an ideal of eternal monogamy.

Current Mormonism is regarded as highly 'Patriarchal' by comparison with current secular norms; especially because only men are priests and there is an ideal of men as leading the household and women being mothers and homemakers. But spiritually there is a strong element of dyadic complementarity to Mormonism, which is evident by comparison with Conservative Evangelicals.

And ultimately this is related to the Evangelical concept of God as a man; while the Mormon God is a Heavenly Father and Mother. But the womens' role in the CJCLDS has always been much more important than in traditionalist mainstream Christian churches; with the Mormon Relief Society a very early feature, and a full range of 'parallel' women's organisations (and significant local, national and international positions of responsibility) within the church.

Thus, the true underlying position of Mormonism is that men and women are complementary 'partners' in their marriage. When this is made into a regulatory generalisation, into official guidance, it comes-out very much like Patriarchy; since on-average this broadly reflects the situation for the majority of men and women.  If we must have 'laws' then these must be 'patriarchal' - because the feminist alternative is much worse.

But in an ideal situation, the dyad of earthly spouses would be able mutually to find their own, perhaps unique, complementary compatibility; based on their own specific natures and dispositions, and the way that an individual marriage evolves over time - with age, with fortune, how many children or their absence, with diseases and disasters etc.

In this sense, all solid and lasting marriages on earth must sometimes be complementary, when circumstances dictate; but for the Romantic view of men and women this is the ideal, not just a regrettable necessity. 

Dyadic marriage, with each man and woman forging a flexible and complementary, permanent and committed, relationship, is - I believe - the proper and truly Romantic ideal for modern men and women; on earth as we hope it shall be in Heaven.

Heavenly Mother - Why and Not

'God' is a dyad of Heavenly Mother and Father, they are co-creators and parents of all. The metaphysical reality is that all persons are male or female and there is no-one who is neither or both.

The whole person is therefore neither man nor woman - each being incomplete - but a dyad of the two complementary persons man and woman; sealed in an eternal loving relationship.

Traditional Christianity - for good reasons - has focused on God the Father, but the time has come for change. While we might continue to refer to 'God' as tacitly implying the two personages, this is coming to seem evasive, and even dishonest.

Of course the potential for being misunderstood, and deliberately misrepresented, is vast - it is a hazardous, dangerous doctrine; but that applies to Christianity in general - and so, where there is need, hazard does not deter.

The key fact is the grounding in the dyadic and complementary metaphysics; this is the basic assumption, which is attested by direct intuitive knowing and coherence, not by empirical 'evidence'. It is thus metaphysical assumption rooted in faith and personal knowledge which clarifies and protects the concept of Heavenly Mother.

What she is, is a matter that need attention, now.

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What she is not?... She is not the same as the Father, not another name for the Father, certainly not an equal to the Father. Complementarity means dissimilarity: two complementary things are not the same, are not equal - their quality is that both in combination are needed to make the whole, the unit.

Heavenly Mother is a part of the dyad of God - not a Goddess; she is not any kind of revival - because she has never been acknowledged nor known up to now. She is of the future, not the past.

She is nothing to do with feminism, and is indeed ultimately the opposite of feminism. She is not in any way 'for women' rather than or in preference to being for men (any more that the legitimate Queen of a nation is for the women of that nation more than the men! Or that mothers are for their daughters more than their sons. Nonsense!).

She is not a 'balance' yet not a take-over either... Heavenly Mother is a fact and a necessity.

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Heavenly Mother is a mystery - because divine; but she is a person we already know, from our long pre-mortal lives as her sons and daughters; we have known her for as long as we consciously knew anything.

If, for good reasons, we have been focused on Heavenly Father (and the reality of our Mother awaited the Mormon revelations of the middle 1800s) - then why do we need her now?

We need her now because the unilateral focus on the Father is preventing our divinely-destined spiritual progression. Where we are now (culturally, individually) is nihilism, despair and death; but we cannot (and should not) go back (which is why all attempts have failed); yet going forward is blocked by a partial and distorted understanding which cuts to the root; progression entails acknowledging the fullness of fundamental understanding, and building-upon that.

At some deep and intuitive level we know this, or we can know it - each for himself or herself - for the asking (serious asking). And we can find out more, and as much as we need, by addressing questions in prayer and meditation and listening for the responses - observing the responses.

(This is not really a matter of 'worship' because the incremental collapse of that concept is representative of the reasons why our Heavenly Mother's time has come. It is instead a matter of acknowledged reality, followed by love; and of conversation, communion, communication.)

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This is not a matter of capturing Heavenly Mother in definitions, any more than this is helpful for our Father; because persons are known, not defined.

There is no need and little value from dividing-up the powers and responsibilities of our Heavenly parents any more than our real parents - yes they are different, and rightly; but no, the difference is not a consequence of, nor captured by, legal categories.

Persons are primary; loving relations are the cohesion and source of organisation.

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How important is this - is it necessary? Since the idea of Heavenly Mother is unsafe, will be deliberately and carelessly misunderstood and misrepresented, will be a reason for hatred and loathing... is she not better set-aside, down-played, kept-quiet about?

That is a decision you need to make for yourself. You need to feel that Heavenly Mother is something we need to know - now: urgently; and which honesty requires that we know - openly, explicitly; knowledge the lack of which is poisoning us in many ways.

The impulse is there, the impulse is in our hearts and unfolding in Western culture. If the impulse is refused and kept  unconscious; it will nonetheless emerge in distorted and inverted forms (like feminism, like misogyny, like resentment and competitive exploitation between men and women).

But if Heavenly Mother is acknowledged and takes her place explicitly and joyously as a completion of our knowledge of God and the basis of our mortal lives; then the destined new era of consciousness may commence.

What is Love? Not cohesion but Polarity

I have had considerable difficulty in conceptualising Love - but I keep trying because it is at the heart of Christianity, and because false conceptions cause trouble; especially in a society like ours, where The Good is under continual attack; and all Good things are subject to subversion, corruption, inversion.

Obviously (to a serious Christian) Love isn't a feeling-just; and obviously also it isn't a justification for sex - it must be a metaphysical (structural) reality of creation. But if one makes a serious formulation of Love along the lines of its being 'cohesion' (as I have previously done) then Love comes-out as being something like the imposition and preservation of 'order'...

And if order is achieved then love will stop, because everything will be frozen, static. Most Christian metaphysical understandings of Love do exactly this, and therefore end up trying to assert that something which is unchanging and eternal - all knowing, omniscient - is also-somehow dynamic, generative, and the primary motivation.

Yet, to conceptualise Love as expanding, always changing - open-endedly and forever - is to fall into something akin to the sexual revolution (as approximated by a free love commune or 'bath house' culture); a continuously-expanding appetite for variety, intensity and transgression.

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In fact, Love turns-out to be the best example of polarity (or polar logic) as described and proposed by Coleridge as the fundamental metaphysical reality. Once this is grasped, we can see that the usual way of dividing up the world into alternatives - as, for example, the division used above that Love is either static or dynamic - when what we actually get is alternatives neither of which is true.

The idea of polarity asserts that at the very heart of things is a principle (or are principle) that have the character of being indivisible; so Love must be envisaged as containing stasis in terms of its poles of cohesion and expansion - but the things itself is living, dynamic and continually re-creating itself; re-creating its differentiations (into cohesion and expansion) and recreating the tendencies (of cohesion and expansion).

(I picture this polarity, metaphorically, as a swirling, dyadic, bipolar 'star'; in which each different star that constitutes the system orbits the other, and the orbit oscillates in diameter - now larger, now smaller - but growing over time, in which energies are continually generated and continually thrown-off. The stars are complementary - each differs from the other and needs the other. The two-fold and orbiting nature of the system is perpetuated forever, but/ and the other features of the system may change open-endedly by expansion, contraction, combination etc. It's only a metaphor and breaks down it pushed, but it helps me.)

If we can suppose that the heart of reality is a polarity of love-as-cohesion ad love-as-expansion, then we can understand how Love may be perpetual - because creative. Love as a polarity is the kind-of-thing which might make the universe, the kind of thing which might keep it alive even while holding it together.

And creativity itself has to be understood as polar - because it includes preservation as well as novelty. And Life, likewise.

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This is a profoundly different way of understanding reality than we are used to - it requires a fundamental change in assumptions. And one reason that polarity has never become normal (although the idea has been knocking-around since Heraclitus) is that - taken seriously - it destroys the established way of understanding things, including mainstream-established Christian theology.

And like any metaphysical change, polarity doesn't make sense when considered in the light of a different and habitual metaphysical system, such as we deploy in public discourse.

Plus there are distorted and misleading versions of failed-polarity knocking around; such as the idea that the ideal is some kind of balanced-mixture of opposing forces - for example the common modern trope that Order and Chaos ought to be in balance. Yet the Order versus Chaos idea is typically one in which the opposition is between static-states, not between forces or tendencies; and is often poisoned by the dishonest attempt to destroy order and allow something otherwise forbidden (sex, drugs, unconstrained pleasure-seeking etc). Order-Chaos might be conceptualised as a true polarity, but in fact it very seldom is.

(It is always possible to reject metaphysical discussion as too theoretical, but it seems to me that in an age such as this one (an age of questioning) wrong metaphysics will sabotage the Good, even when the attacks on it are incoherent.)

A further problem with polarity and Christianity is that most Christians attempt to be monotheists, and are very concerned to assert the one-ness of God. Whether they are successful (given the full deity of Christ) is moot. Non-Christian monotheists such as Jews and Muslims (and common sense analysts) would say that Christianity is polytheistic - but Christian philosophers have regarded it as metaphysically crucial that God should ultimately be one, However, if God is ultimately one then polarity is not profound - only superficial.

Therefore a metaphysics of polarity implies that deity be polar - and Coleridge argued this using the Holy Trinity as polar components - although I find that I cannot follow his argument. Nonetheless, for a mainstream Christian to believe in polarity as primary, it seems necessary the Holy Trinity somehow be understood as a polarity. 

For those, like myself, who believe that Mormon theology is correct, the answer is obvious - that God is a polarity of masculine and feminine, that the ultimate basis of polarity is God conceptualised as a complementary dyad of Heavenly Father and Mother; and this primary polarity creates all others.

This idea of polarity at the root of everything fits with the Mormon understanding of reality as evolving, because evolution is also a polarity of continuity and newness. Evolution is a transformation, a changing of form in a retained entity, not the substitution of one entity for another different one. Evolution is about eternal lineage as well as here-and-now difference. 

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It is not easy to grasp; but I have found that the idea of polarity as the fundamental metaphysical reality is one of great clarity, strength and power; and I recommend it.


(Further reading on polarity is What Coleridge Thought by Owen Barfield, 1971.)