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.   

God in us, and/or outside us

Is God outside of us and/ or is God within us? This is often framed in terms of transcendent or immanent - but these are freighted terms, and create an either/or dichotomy that cannot be resolved except by 'mystery' formulations.

God is outside us because God is the creator of this world. And God is also within us because we are his children, and inherited divinity from him.

This is not generally accepted in any simple or literal sense by mainstream Christians, because they regard God as transcendent, utterly other, beyond, and qualitatively different from us... outside time, space and creation. Such a God cannot really be within us and also a part of us because so utterly alien from us.

Those who regard God as wholly immanent do not see God as a personal creator. They cannot coherently regard life as meaningful or purposive - things just are.

But if we instead regard time as part of primary reality, then we can understand this in a sequential fashion.


God (Heavenly parents, man and woman - that is persons) is in the universe, which always existed in uncreated form. And this primal reality also contained the primordial Men - some eternal essence distinct from God: these are the Beings.

Thus God is outside of us. God is separate persons from us, God created this world - and we did not.

God created creation (as it were ) around-themselves (and this is continuous); and also took the Beings that are potential God (i.e. primordial men and women) and procreated us into the children of God. Therefore God is now within us; by inheritance.

This is how Jesus could become fully divine, on a par with our Heavenly parents (although still their children, and still living in their creation) and how we too can potentially become fully divine; because God is literally within us.


As Jesus tells us in the Fourth Gospel - we can become full children of God, and have that Life Everlasting. As fully divine; we can then participate in continuing creation - expanding the pre-existent creation by our own unique creativity (that we have by virtue of having been primordially distinct from our Heavenly parents - so we are not merely copies nor combinations of them).

And this is what God wants, more than anything, and is the reason behind creation. So that our Heavenly parents are no longer alone, but surrounded by a divine family of divine children; engaged in the divine work of creation.


And what makes this all fit together, so that creation is a harmony despite being the open-ended work of many and diverse minds, is Love. Love is the primary value and basis of creation.

It is Love that means there is no conflict but instead glorious harmony, between God without and God within.

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.

The impulse and motive for divine creation

Kristor at the Orthosphere has written a post in response to mine of yesterday and others by Francis Berger - that asks several questions. These seem to require and deserve a more extensive elucidation than can be done in comments, including an expansion of underlying metaphysical assumptions; so here it is. 

This procedure distorts my metaphysical views, because they are being expressed in response to Kristor's framework of ultimate assumptions - so that, even when I try to elucidate - means that my account is fragmentary and seen from an alien angle. But maybe this is the best that can be managed in the circumstances. 

(Obviously, I usually and by preference express my metaphysical ideas in their own terms, trying to make a model or paint a picture of how reality is structured and proceeds.)

 

From Kristor is in italics - edited by me; my responses follow BC: 

The situation prior to creation that Bruce describes is already a world: a disharmonious congeries of eternal conscious selves, purposive beings who suffer affects, who feel, want, act, and so on, 

BC: That is a correct description of my views

who relate to and influence each other (so that they can love, or not), all more or less ordered to a good, which apparently they can all more or less recognize, and to which they are more or less attracted. 

BC: No. Before creation there is no such interaction or harmonization. 

They are from eternity past together in a temporal – and so, presumably also spatial – milieu, in which they have and prosecute lives, but only messily. 

BC: Sort of... but before creation there is no comparison by which their autonomous lives can be called messy. 

Thus they can apprehend each other, and God, and his creative plan; they can find it attractive, can want to participate in it, and can then actually do so. 

BC: No. I regard the above description as happening after creation has been initiated. 

The question then arises, what is the reason of this world that was running along from eternity past, all on its own, before one of its constituents got started on his creative project – or after, for that matter? If we answer that there is no prior reason it is what it is, that its eternal existence is a brute fact, we have admitted that it is fundamentally unintelligible; for, what has no sufficient reason to be what it is cannot be reasonable, either in whole or in part: for, brute facts are utterly inscrutable, in principle, thus even to themselves. 

BC: Correct. Before creation there can be no reasons, except internally - "privately", within beings. Things Just Are.  

What is not reasonable cannot be a world, or for that matter any such thing as the items we find all around us, and in us. It can be rather only just stuff happening for no reason: the chaos of Democritean atomism, but with the atoms all sentient, solipsistically. 

BC: Yes, pretty much a correct summary- except that having sentient beings/ "atoms" makes all the difference. Divine creation is (pretty much) the transformation from solipsistic to ongoing-creation - insofar as creation has happened (which changes through time, because creation is linear and sequential).  

If we say that this world prior to creation has no cause because it is necessarily what it is, then every detail of it must be necessary; in which case there is in it no freedom, for it is a spatiotemporally extended block, in which nothing really moves or acts, or therefore is. 

BC: No, this is wrong. "Necessity" does not come into it when things Just Are. Things really "move" but only within beings, not between beings. 

What we end up with then is either the pure chaos of brute unintelligible fact, and no world, or else the wholly determined motionlessness of universal necessity. 

BC: No, neither of these alternatives; because they are regarding the primordial beings as if unalive. Starting with beings rather than "things" makes all the difference. 

There is of course a third option: the classical metaphysics of Nicene Christianity, in which God as uniquely eternal and necessary is the sufficient reason for all being, including his own: not a brute fact, but on the contrary the perfectly intelligent and thus intelligible fact, in whose light all other things are intelligible, at least in principle, so that knowledge is possible; and in which creatures are not eternal, but rather contingent upon God, so that as contingent they can change, act, suffer, move, love, learn, grow, understand and be understood, and so forth. 

BC from now onwards: 

This leads on to consider God's motivation for creation.

If God is a unity, there can be no motive for anything. Such a God Just Is. 

But my understanding is that God is a dyad of Heavenly Parents - Heavenly Father and Mother. My understanding is that it is the love between our Heavenly Parents that is the motivation for creation - in a way closely analogous to the spiritually-understood way that love between two (ideal) loving human beings may lead to the choice of initiating pro-creation - that is having children who are loved; and beginning what may be an extended family.

(Of course, mortal human parents are born as already part of an extended and (ideally) loving family. But I am here talking about how this all began.) 

Creation is therefore a concept that arises from love, and includes procreation as well as all the other many ways in which loving relationships between beings of all kinds may become.  

To put matters very simply: there is a Timeline for creation. The primordial situation of autonomous and not-relating beings becomes creation as a consequence of our Heavenly Parents meeting, becoming mutually aware, and committing themselves to eternal love. 

Our Heavenly Parents thus became God, and creation began by God's "interventions" on primordial reality; and to the extent that primordial beings opt-in to live by love. 

This was not the original situation of reality, there was a time when it happened, and it might not have happened. 

Furthermore, beings are usually only partly capable of love; and presumably some beings are incapable of love (and therefore do not participate in creation). 

Thus God's primary creation is a mixed state of love, and not-love. 

And it is this deficit in primary creation that led to the need for Jesus Christ and the Second Creation, "needed" because Jesus completes the work of creation by enabling Heaven which is the eternal situation of beings living by love; leaving-behind other and evil motivations at resurrection.

**

By Contrast: Orthodox-traditional "Nicene" Christianity perhaps needs to posit a motive for creation - a motive for God creating rather than not; and therefore (sometimes) posits an analogous impetus for creation in the love of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost - each for the other. 

It is the differences-between the Trinity that enable the love that leads to creation...

However this explanation is made confusing/ incoherent by also insisting that the Trinity are not only different from each other, but also simultaneously the same as each other (because there is only one God). 

(This is required by the insistence on a monotheistic Omni-God creating ex nihilo - such a God cannot be internally subdivided.) 

And furthermore; ortho-trad theology has it that that the "process" of creation (and of love among the Trinity) happens outside of time - so creation always-was-and-is; so there is no "Timeline" of creation. All that is now, ever was and shall be. 

And this is the point at which orthodox Christianity reaches its particular It Just Is assumption - explanations stop at this point.

All metaphysics must reach this point, sooner or later - the point at which we must make assumptions regarding the ultimate nature of reality. 

The goal (as I see it) is to become aware of where this point is reached, to acknowledge this; and to know that here we are indeed making assumptions... 

Which activity is (I suggest) properly called "metaphysics" 

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.

*

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.

*

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.)

*

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.

*

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.

Ultimate metaphysics and Mother in Heaven

In understanding metaphysics using the deepest and most spontaneous kind of explanation; I need to dispense with mathematics, physics and 'science' in general.

My aim is something much more like those Ancient Egyptian myths of primal beings - gods and titans emerging from chaos; or the folk stories about 'totem animals'... Instead of particles and forces we have beings with motivations.

As I have previously posted I have a personal intuition/ revelation that confirms the Mormon teaching (independently endorsed by William Arkle) that God is both Father and Mother (a 'dyad' - complementary - the whole God consisting of an eternal union of man and woman).

The implications are tremendous, and only incrementally becoming clear to me.

One is that this is the truth behind the principle of 'polarity' as articulated by Coleridge and clarified by Barfield. 'Polarity' is a concept derived from the physical sciences - hence is only a model: the reality is our Heavenly Parents.

Thus, the two interdependent forces - centrifugal and centripetal - about which Coleridge talks; and from the interaction of which, all may be derived in a dynamic and self-renewing way; are actually the primal man and woman.

If we ask what is the difference between the Father and Mother, we have actually taken a step away-from the primary reality, because our answer can only be in terms of abstract qualities - whereas our  divine parents are the irreducible units from-which all else (including all abstractions) are derived.

Our Heavenly parents are what they are. While we can know and understand them empathically, by direct intuition - because we are their children and of the same kind - we must (in the attempt to communicate) resist the false temptation to describe them in terms of lesser qualities, or to analyse them as quantities - and then to regard these partial, distorted, abstracted descriptions as the reality.

Heavenly Father and Mother differ; qualitatively and complementarily (to make a living unity in-time); but this difference can't be captured by a static, structural 'personality description'. 

Creation is the consequence of their love; and that is why love is (as the Fourth Gospel tells us) the prime relationship in the universe of creation. Nothing is more important than love; because love (between our Heavenly parents) is the causal basis and reason for all of creation (including, of course, the creation of ourselves, as children of God).

Having reached this point; it seems very important to pay more attention to both Father and Mother in the nature of God; this duality is neglected yet must be of prime importance. If this was physics, we would not neglect one of a polarity - how much more important when it comes to God.

Indeed, this seems a matter of urgent importance.

The Vision of William Arkle - the question of Mother in Heaven

*

I came to the point of love at my inmost heart, and I was glad and at rest, like unto the end of things. But the point was not a point, it was a doorway opening both inwards and outwards. Though I had thought to rest there for ever, I could not do so for long, since my deepest feelings pulled me. So pushing gently inwards I passed through the doorway and went in.

Then it was if I had walked onto the palm of the hand of my God, who had now become my great friend. The palm of His hand was as the most sensitive place in his heart might be. It was tenderly aware and responsive, so that I stopped still in case I should hurt it.

In some strange way the hand was the heart and it extended beyond my understanding in all directions unto the fingers. While the palm of this great hand was content to be at rest, as I was, the fingers had a longing in them to express the nature that was the heart of the hand. The place that had been a doorway had now become like a whole country opened from within...

Then go up to this house. He will ask you in and She will greet you there. Father and Mother of us all, dwelling in a valley of the hills that are not, but are the hand that is the heart always. From this place their spirit never moves and in this place is the measure of all things kept safely. But you may go in and touch direct the uttermost. Then you will have the foundation about you you did not know to need. It remains in the smile there and all things are borne up by it. This is what is served to every friend who comes...

With a voice that needed no sound, my friend spoke through the whole of the vast country. His hand and His fingers were full of the expression of each word. The fingers not only held fast the treasure of the hand, but they were also the means of discovery. The spirit of this discovery was in need of companions, and I could be such a companion. For that which remained to be discovered lay out beyond the finger-tips of God's person in a larger reality of being...

Long would be the telling of this aching hand whose heart shall hold friends and teach the art to many in that country that cannot be said, between whose spirits the potency of difference so gladly spreads to uncover and display a growth to all things new.

From The Hand of God by William Arkle

**

The Hand of God Prose-Poem - excerpted above - strikes me as an account of William Arkle's prime and (as it seems to me ) genuinely revelatory vision; which contains the compressed essence of his message, which he elaborated over a period of decades in various different forms - through prose narratives - factual and fictional, poetry, paintings, music, and (especially in the 1974 book A Geography of Consciousness) formal geometric/ engineering/ scientific/ philosophical analogies.

So the above excerpt contains:

The belief that we are in the hand of God (the theme of multiple paintings)

 Then the idea of a Mother in Heaven, as well as a Father

Then the key to all the elaborations - that the creator Father (and Heavenly Mother) wanted more than anything to have children who might grow towards divinity and eventually choose to become friends (in an extremely elevated sense of that word) with their Heavenly Father (and Mother).

The whole of creation is then set up with that purpose in mind. 

*

This matter of a Heavenly Mother is perhaps the most striking to Mainstream Christians, and is one of those undecided aspects of Mormonism.

Many Mormons believe there is a Heavenly Mother - who is our Mother in Heaven (some used to and a few probably still do believe there were several Heavenly Mothers), and this including Presidents of the Church and Apostles.

The divine parenthood is included in the language of that major (and wonderful) policy statement The Family: a Proclamation to the World - "Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents...".

Yet, this is not an official doctrine, nor from a specific church-wide revelation, nor a required belief; and it is specifically prohibited to pray to or worship Heavenly Mother (She is not regarded as equivalent to Heavenly Father).

Mormons are therefore free to believe in our Mother in Heaven, or not.

So what do I think, personally? 

*

I am not certain. Initially I believed in Mother in Heaven, then I found I did not (regarding God the Father as solitary and eternal before having children - God the Father as unique exception to the need for divine marriage.

Now I am inclined to believe again that we do have divine parents, although I am uncertain (and incurious) about the origin of Heavenly Mother.

*

(My tentative theory is that all pre-existent spirits are either male or female; and the first thing God the Father and primary creator did (as a male) was to take a pre-existent female spirit and endowed her with divinity. She always had and continued to have autonomous agency (free will) and they both chose eternal celestial marriage and became the primal parents - all other personages being their children.)

*

Also, I have found that Arkle's revelatory vision have enhanced my confidence that there is a Heavenly Mother - because:

1. I regard his primary and basic vision as a valid revelation (although I do not find all his elaborations and extrapolations and systematization to be compelling).

2. I see not the slightest sign that Arkle had any knowledge of Mormonism; yet his basic vision seems strikingly convergent with Mormonism - so his witness of a Heavenly Mother looks to me like independent corroboration.  

*

Having made that decision to believe, I find that it makes my heart leap with joy!

(Yet also a kind of fear and caution that I may be believing from self-gratification, and a fear of the contradictions with Mainstream Christianity.)

Yet the joy wins - and the simple symmetry between Mortal and Divine parents is a lovely thing.

*

What are the causes of the developmental change ("evolution") in human consciousness throughout history?

A clear statement description of the way that human consciousness has changed throughout recorded history (and inferred from pre-history) is something I associate with Rudolf Steiner and his later follower Owen Barfield; who both explained it in terms of each human being having undergone multiple reincarnations. The changing nature of consciousness was therefore assumed to be caused by the accumulated experience and learning - hence maturity - of the reincarnating spirit. 

Ultimately, the underlying cause of these assumed multi-reincarnational changes was tacitly assumed to be the divine will; which sought to provide multiple and additive experiences to spirits. 

This was supposed to operate by a process that starts with pure (immaterial) spirit beings, leads down into denser and denser incarnations (such as ourselves), and ultimately (as its highest goal) leads back up to purely spiritual existence. 

But I do not share these assumptions about reincarnation. 

More importantly I regard Jesus Christ as having provided Man with the opportunity of resurrected human life in Heaven - which is a permanent state of embodied incarnation. 

In short: as of 2025 (and for nearly 2000 years) God does not want us to reincarnate after death - but instead to follow Jesus Christ to resurrected eternal life in heaven. 

Thus, for me, the objective of spiritual development is not a "spiritual being"; but instead a resurrected and embodied Man, of which the model was the resurrected Jesus.    

However, since I regard the evolutionary development of Mankind as a reality, but reject the Steiner/ Barfield explanation; I feel a need to explain this in terms of causality. I believe that there are several interacting causes, working at different levels. What follows is my current understanding. 

1. God's plan

At the deepest level of causation; I believe that God (our Heavenly Parents) desires that divine creation should lead first to divine children, and then towards the idea of "divine adults" - God seeks to encourage childlike children to develop into grown-up friends. 

(Much as it is usual (but with significant exceptions) to expect and hope that our own mortal children will not remain immature and childlike; but will grow-up to make the choice to become "best friends" with their parents.) 

In other words; divine creation is structured towards the generation of God's children - such as we now are; and that we children should be enabled and encouraged to "grow up" further, in order to mature towards becoming beings of the same kind and level as our Heavenly Parents. 

In yet other words; God desires that we would (through time) choose to develop towards becoming fully divine, fully loving, creators - and then to participate in the eternal work of divine creation. It was Jesus Christ who first achieved this, and who made it possible for others to follow Him in this. 

The goal is that our Heavenly Parents should cease to be the only beings at their level of divinity, but should build a continually growing family of grown-up children of God (together with the extended family of those beloved children who - whether by spiritual nature or current-choice - remain spiritually "immature": i.e. not full-creators.  

2. Incarnation of progressively more mature spirits

One of the ways that God influences the direction of creation, is through the nature of pre-mortal spirits that are incarnated into mortal life on earth. 

My impression is that when the earliest-known Men were first incarnated, their consciousness was more like that of young children. And incrementally throughout history, progressively more-grown-up spirits were incarnated; who tended to mature towards what we would now recognize as more adult modes of consciousness. 

So, at present and overall, spirits are incarnated that spontaneously mature to a kind of spiritual adolescence - beyond which further maturation depends on various individual factors, including personal will and choices. 

(I suspect that while spiritual maturation from childhood to adolescence is mostly spontaneous and involuntary; maturation beyond spiritual adolescence can only ever be attained by active alignment with God's nature and creative will, and by personal choice - the choice to live only by love.)

Maturity is most obviously revealed in terms of thinking and self-awareness... Modern Men are aware of our-selves and the distinction from the world and others; and we live subjectively in our stream of conscious thoughts - in ways that did not happen (or only in rare individuals) in the past. 

3. Metaphysical assumptions and ideology

Due to the nature of the human society into-which modern humans are born (which is partly a consequence of past and present choices by other people; under the influence of demonic beings) - modern Men assume that ultimate reality is dead (unalive), material (not spiritual); and operates solely by physical-mechanical causes or non-causally/ chaotically (ie. "randomly").  

I believe that these bottom-line assumptions concerning reality have a profound and malign effect on modern Man's consciousness.

What this typical modern metaphysics does to our consciousness; is to transform self-awareness into a false conviction of inescapable existential alienation - the implicit yet wrong belief that we are alone in our thinking, which is merely subjective: detached from reality. 

And this leads onto the typically modern mind-set of existential despair; variously countered by the attempt to overwhelm it with hedonism, and/or to obliterate thinking by such means as constant distraction by powerful stimuli, strong emotions, intoxication, and the like. 

In sum: an element in the changing of consciousness is the prevalent ideology of our times. And in more general terms, it would be expected that metaphysics, theology, and ideology would often (although not necessarily) tend to shape human consciousness in particular directions - which is, of course, exploited as much as possible by the purposive powers of supernatural evil. 

4. Direct spiritual contact between people, and other beings

I believe that there is potentially a direct (mind-to-mind, as it were) contact between living people, between the living and some of those who have died, and other beings. 

Insofar as this happens (for instance, among those people in mutually-loving relationships) among people whose consciousness's are changing for the reasons described above; this is the basis for shaping, perhaps amplifying or instead reversing, changes in consciousness that may be directional through time.

Put differently; we each inhabit a very selective thought-world - one that changes throughout our lives, and includes new, different, other-minds (alive, dead, or potentially not human). 

This, then, is another reason for changes in consciousness.  

5. The comfort and guidance of the Holy Ghost

The Holy Ghost is a potential source of comfort and guidance for those who follow Jesus, and this contact naturally affects a human consciousness and its development through time. 

Such interaction with the Holy Ghost has the nature of a chosen, mutual, and specific relationship between one spiritual Being and another. 

Which means that I disagree with those who conceptualize the Holy Ghost as providing some kind of blanket effect on Mankind, or any particular group of people. 

(I also disagree with those who regard the evolution of consciousness as driven by any kind of quasi-physics-like influence on the planet and its inhabitants... I mean those who see the maturation of consciousness as driven by an externally-applied influence - such as increasing frequency or vibrational level; or some kind of transformation of spiritual force, or an increase in spiritual energy; or indeed by astrological change.)

  

 

As a general comment - I think it is probably necessary to emphasize (to myself, if not other others!) that the causal mechanisms that contribute to the developmental evolution of human consciousness, are all aimed at the individual human spirit. 

I am increasingly sure that God does not, and never has, operated primarily at the level of human groups. 

We ought therefore to try and stop thinking habitually about Men In The Mass; when it comes to understanding fundamental spiritual matters.

 

The false-impression that God is concerned primarily with the salvation of particular tribes or particular churches; was I think an (inevitable) artefact of an earlier stage of human consciousness; among Men who (inevitably - but with some few exceptions) experienced reality in this groupish way.

That is to say: The earlier we go in history, the more groupish was human consciousness - and individuals were not, and did not feel nor aspire to be, detached from the "group mind". 

But as of Now - things are very different. From adolescence onward, modern people are spontaneously detached from the group mind, and must therefore be influence and controlled ("micro-managed") by multiple and constantly-applied external and perceptual inputs - laws, rules, propaganda etc.)  

Nowadays, such groupishness in considering Christian theology is simply an error - but no longer an inevitable error; being instead the consequence of (for example) false metaphysics, wishful thinking, despair, dreadful fear - or a simple paucity of alternative ideas.  

Therefore; we should understand the evolution of consciousness as the averaged outcome of our innate (inborn) spiritual-nature; with a multitude of individual human choices; concerning the outcomes of individually-tailored ("bespoke") interactions between each individual person with God and the Holy Ghost. 

 

Mormon metaphysics of Love between actual persons as a description of ultimate reality

For mainstream Christianity the ultimate reality is described in abstract, physics-like terms (especially in the assumed/ attributed nature of God - the omni qualities, God's absolute unity (monotheism); creation from nothing, existing outside of time and space etc).

Consequently, the core Christian value of Love is also understood abstractly - and it is not at the heart of reality, it is not the first thing. For many mainstream Christians; these abstract attributes of God are far more important than anything else: e.g. that there is one God, and that he is of total power, that God is qualitatively infinitely different-from and greater-than Men... these is in practice are more important than God being a loving God.

This has often been a problem for mainstream Christianity - where it has proved very difficult to hold Love at the centre of Christian belief and life; and where officially-recognised heresies have often been at the level of abstract and 'physics-like' metaphysics - e.g. the bitter and vicious Christology disputes of the second century AD onwards (i.e. how Christ is both God and Man), the disputes of the nature and relations of the Trinity (i.e. how Christ is God yet there is only one God), disputes over the possibility of free will/ agency (i.e. how that can be genuine agency in a reality with a totally known past, present and future) etc.

In general; the abstract metaphysical principles are accepted, and other things have to give-way to them (including common sense and normal logic - as with the standard definitions of the nature of Christ and the Trinity).

Mormonism assumes a biological, indeed human, ultimate reality. The primary reality is heavenly parents (who love and marry eternally), and primordial intelligences (divided between male and female), in a chaotic universe.

Creation involves God/ our heavenly parents organising the chaos, and procreating the primordial intelligences into sons and daughters of God.

At bottom, therefore, there is sexual differentiation (men and women) and human relationships.

Consequently (for Mormon metaphysics) Love is the 'first thing' in creation and in sustaining reality; i.e. the primary event in organising creation was the love of Heavenly parents; and their love for their children.

And this divine love is continuous-with/ qualitatively the same kind of human love as we know among men and women, parents and children, at the best moments of mortal life on earth.

Mormon metaphysics is that Love is the basis and reason for creation: meaning love between actual persons - not a physics-like abstraction.


Drawing this out as *explicit* metaphysics was something done considerably after Joseph Smith's death, by various intellectuals (Sterling McMurrin especially, but earlier BH Roberts) - but the substance was revealeed by JS and embodied in the doctrines of the church.

Why categorize evil? Why categorize Good?

 A couple of profoundly-clarifying posts by WmJas Tychonievich have led to the following thoughts. 

Good and evil are not symmetrical - not mirror images - because Good is positive divine creation; while evil is 'various ways' of being opposed to divine creation. Thus Good is primary, and evil cannot exist without Good. 

(This is why I habitually capitalize Good, and make evil lower case - subliminally to emphasize their qualitative difference in kind.)

The reason that I have suggested considering evil as Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic is a matter of expediency - it need not reflect and actual categories or distinction in the real world. It is a (more, or less) useful way of understanding evil. 

The reason for doing it was becuase Ahrimanic evil was not being recognised consciously as evil. I think most people spontaneously feel that Ahrimanic evil is indeed evil - i.e. the modern workplace and mass media makes people feel bad (e.g. afraid, resentful, despairing). 

But they do not consciously recognize it as necessarily evil by nature and motivation because they do not understand that Good is rooted in God and divine creation; and even if Christians have become transfixed by ancient lists and exemplars of Luciferic sins (murder, torture, rape, arson, theft etc) which are not what it at issue in a totalitarian Matrix of omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

OK so much for evil; but why divide and differentiate Good? I think that a categorization of Good ought to reflect actual, natural reality - rather than being merely expedient. 

And this seems especially important in this Ahrimanic age, when we so often categorize to kill: categorize in order to destroy that which is alive, organic, conscious, purposive...

Lists of virtues, laws of behaviour... these Now (however it was in the past) function to short-circuit thinking from our real and divine self - and to make us bureaucratic functionaries, being instructed by checklists and flow-charts. 

All language, and all concepts, are merely 'models' of real-reality; but we should only be categorizing Good in so far as this is really based-on the categories of real-reality. 

Good is rooted in divine creation, which is rooted in love - so Good is ultimately a unity of motivation. For a Christian Love is Good and it is the single Good.  

Indeed, the purpose of Jesus making possible our resurrection to eternal life is that we may each become able to contribute, each in our unique way - from our unite nature, to the single harmony of many unique goods - to help-make a creation that is always (but always differently and changing) Good. 

But WmJas reminds me that (as we both know, from our acceptance of Joseph Smith's Mormon revelations) behind the integrated harmony of divine loving creation are Two divine beings: our Heavenly Father and Mother. 

God is a dyad, and the single harmony of creating comes from the love of our Heavenly Parents; who are therefore, two qualitatively-different kinds of being that is Good. 

In a sense Heavenly Father and Mother can each be understood (i.e. can be abstractly modelled in language) as what Wm terms Ahuric /Seeking-Good  and Devic Avoiding-evil; or active versus passive* Good - or (as I now think of them) man-good and woman-good.  

Mormon theology has it that sexual difference (male and female) is an essential characteristic of individual pre-mortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose. God the Father is not a self-sufficient 'monad' of Goodness. Instead - God is two kinds of Goodness. 

Instead "God" is a dyad of Heavenly parents, a man and a woman. It is their love (and love is always between Beings) that is the cause of creation: thus all creation is loving-creation. 

(I will now modify, summarize and expand on some comments from Wm Jas.) 

This implies that there are two complementary types of good. No being, no person (not even Jesus) can fully embody both. And, as Wm says, Jesus was indeed an exemplar of positive, active Good - but not so for the negative, passive* kinds of Good (which are instead represented in Catholic Christianity by the figure of Mary his mother). 

Since sexual difference is an essential pre-mortal characteristic. This difference comes before observable chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, motivations, abilities and behaviours. Sexual difference therefore reflects a fundamental division of primordial Human Beings - into promordial men, who are (insofar as they individually are Good) are orientated towards positive Good; and women who are orientated towards the avoidance of evil.

And that causal primary division of ultimate nature is usually reflected, or approximated, in the 'sexual dimorphism' of anatomy, physiology and behaviour of mortal incarnate humans. 

(...Remembering that this mortal life is individually tailored for our unique personal learning requirements - so no specific generalizations apply universally.) 

In sum: it is legitimate to state that really there are two qualitatively different kinds of Good - and that these are the two characteristic Goods of our Heavenly Parents. These are reflected in their Heavenly Children as we observe them - mortal men and women; and will be reflected in Heaven. 

That is the reality - and we can then summarize, model, and in general try to capture these reality-differences in language - but these linguistic descriptions will never be more that partial and distorted representations. 

The reality is in the distinction between the two persons of our Heavenly Father and Mother.

*Passive and negative are wrong terms - for reasons described in the comments. In truth, I think the distinctive complementary qualities of good in a man compared with a woman are irreducible; because this sexual difference of human Beings is primary (hence irreducible). 

Children do not feel a need to propitiate their loving parents - real Christians ought Not to regard God as needing propitiation

I have often written of the un-Christian, indeed anti-Christian, idea that God want, needs and demands propitiation. 

I have also often written about my conviction that the spontaneous and natural "spiritual knowledge" of young children was built-into us by God, for our guidance, and as the basis of that adult knowledge we develop from properly-interpreted experiences and (usually) increasing capacity. 

I was considering my own childhood compulsion to pray (I was aged about 5-6 years), and how such prayers were almost entirely propitiatory in nature: I would beg my god (who was, I think, conceptualized as Thor) for the safety and survival of those I loved; and these prayers "needed" to be specific for each person, were desperate, and were repeated over and over again to the limit of my endurance.

These prayers were a ritual (before sleep) needed to avoid the punishment of harm being visited on those I loved. 

And, although the ritual was done to avert harm, I was very unsure of its effectiveness. Partly this was because of a sense that if I said or did anything wrong, then this would at least negate the prayer; and it might even evoke a punishment for my mistake - such that just what I prayed against, would be inflicted as the punishment.

(This seems to have been a common view of religious ritual through much of history, e.g. in the European Middle Ages - i.e. that it must be done exactly correctly or else it would do more harm than good.)

My first thought was to wonder whether this childhood experience of spontaneous propitiatory prayer was a guide to the real nature of God. I wondered if the fact I prayed in this style and spirit without being told, might be evidence that this was the real nature of God and his relationship with us. 

But then it suddenly struck me that I never felt the same way about my own mother or father. 

I never felt that my parents wanted, needed or demanded "propitiation". Indeed, the idea never even crossed my mind. 

The reason was obvious: I knew that my parents loved me. 

And I knew this - it was my solid faith. 

Therefore, because my parents really loved me and I knew it; propitiation was utterly alien and inappropriate - and indeed would be hurtful to loving parents. 

The God of whom Jesus speaks is spoken of as his Father and our Father, as the ideal and perfect loving Father.

Of Course a loving Father does not want propitiation - certainly He does not demand propitiation, nor does God our loving Father punish his children for failing to perform sufficient or correct propitiations...  

Jesus is saying pretty plainly that the real God, the Creator, is our loving Father*; and asking us to have the same "faith" in God's love that a child may have in the love of good parents - as I had in the love of my parents. 

By talking of and to his loving Father; Jesus is saying that a God who is regarded as wanting, needing, demanding propitiation is a false God; because the real God (the "Christian" God, the true creator) is of an absolutely different kind - God is Jesus's actual loving-Father, and our actual loving-Father; and we should have absolute confidence that He loves us as the ideal and perfect Father. 

Many, most - perhaps all? - other religions conceptualize their God or gods in ways that make propitiation of such God/s natural and needful...

And there are plenty of Beings - including human-beings, as well as various spirit-beings, including demonic - that do demand propitiation...

But these are not who Jesus meant by God.

(It very often seems to me that many self-identified Christians {and especially those who profess ultra-orthodox or traditionalist convictions} are actually - albeit implicitly - worshipping the God of Judaism, and/ or of Islam, rather than the Father of Jesus Christ.)  

What this means is that self-identified Christians who believe that their God requires propitiation are making a very serious error. 

(There are many, many, such Christians - often among the most "devout" - and always have been.) 

And if they persist in this error of worshipping a propitiation-demanding God; and if they (for instance) build their core theology, their articles of faith, around the necessity for propitiation; then the God that such people are advocating is Not the same God whom Jesus was addressing. 

In a nutshell: The Christian God is a loving Father, and Jesus asks us to have the same kind of faith in God's love that a good child has in the love of his parents. 

Genuine parental love - by Man of Men, or God of His children - has nothing to do with propitiation. 

   

*Note: I should clarify that ultimately I personally regard God as a dyad of Heavenly Father and Mother for metaphysical (and intuitive) reasons explained elsewhere; but my argument applies the same both to God understood as Father only, and to God as Heavenly Parents. So, I have presented the above argument in traditional language.   

What is God like? What does God want from creation?

I have had the privilege of reading in manuscript a collection from letters from William Arkle to a young friend and spiritual-disciple/ -colleague; spanning from the middle 1980s to near the end of Arkle's life (in 2000).  

These have provoked all kinds of thoughts on that vital matter which Arkle 'made his own': questions on the nature of God, and God's hopes and aims in creation. 

 

For all Christians; God is (or should be) a person, not an abstraction. 

We are God's children (that is related-to, descended-from God); and God loves us. 

Beyond this, there are differences of understanding; and there is indeed a difference in my understanding and that of Arkle. More precisely, in his early work, Arkle described what I believe is true: God is a dyad, Father and Mother in Heaven: God is our Heavenly Parents. 

This is also the understanding of Mormon thelogy; and it natually goes-with an understanding of each Human Being as - in his or her eternal primordial essence, and eternally in future - either a man, or a woman (never neither, nor both). 

This metaphysical reality does not necessarily map-onto what may happen to an individual man or woman in terms of biological sex and/or sexuality during this mortal, earthly incarnation - which has the nature of a temporary experience for us to learn-from. My understanding is that - whatever happens 'superficially' in mortal life - each of us eternally has been, and eternally will be, essentially (by the nature of our true and divine self) a man or a woman eternally. 

 

But by the 1980s, Arkle had apparently moved to a view of God as primarily both man and woman simultaneously (a He/ She); and this goes-with an idea of sex as relatively superficial to the essence of Human Being - and with reincarnation as potentially alternating (as 'required') between the sexes; neither being the essence of a Human Being. Or with sex (and marriage, and procreation) being 'discarded' when a Human Being has reached Heaven

(Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield also share this understanding of sex. And it also goes-with an understanding of spirit-form as both the past and future of Man: Man was a spirit, will become a spirit; and physical incarnation is an intermediate stage, for experience and learning only.)

Whereas by contrast; my view (and the Mormon view) is that physical incarnation is higher than spirit life: bodies are better. Including that God is embodied - i.e. God is physically-bounded and in the same as human form (or rather, causally vice versa); God is not an omnipresent spirit. 

So, for me, God is embodied, and indeed two bodies: God is a dyad: Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.

This matter of "what God is like", whether God is One or Two, is a vital to our metaphysics; because it decides our understanding of why God embarked on creation. Our inferred motivation of a unitary, solo God is very different from that of two Heavenly Parents, distinct but united by their mutual love. 

 

(Traditional Christian theology has it that God was utterly self-sufficient, and without needs (or desires). Trinitarian theology makes the love of this unitary God also be (somehow) sub-divided into the mutual love of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But either way, the creation of Men and everything-else by God is an ultimately gratuitous act - and Not a matter of God seeking greater satisfaction, Not a matter of God needing, wanting, desiring or yearning. I personally reject this line of reasoning on the basis that God is a person, like our-selves in an ultimate sense; and that God does have passions, wishes. In particular I regard Love as the primary passion of God, and I regard Love as having in its nature many aspects such as needing, wanting, desiring and yearning.) 

Arkle's inference, based on his understanding of God as unity and a real person - is that God before creation must have been lonely and bored. God's greatest need was for things to do, and people to do-things-with. 

From this, Arkle derives an understanding that creation is essentially a matter of overcoming loneliness and boredom; of creating Beings who can develop to become like himself, and of creating many other things 'for fun'. 

Arkle encapsulates this in the ideas that in making Men who can evolve towards full-deity God is literally Making Friends; creating Beings who - it is hoped - will become 'friends' at the same divine level as God. And secondly that all the other Beings of Creation are made as a kind of ultimate 'play'. So that for Arkle life is - at its highest, most divine - created life is about play with and among friends.  

It should be noted - and this comes through repeatedly in these late Arkle letters, that loneliness and boredom are negative motivations - therefore creation is a kind of cosmic therapy for the unitary God.  

My own view, based on God as the loving-dyad of celestial husband and wife, of Heavenly Parents; is that creation is a natural consequence of the existential nature of Love. Creation is the positively-motivated overflow and expansion of spousal love. 

This is nothing esoteric, but a motivation that has been experienced (albeit perhaps partially and temporarily, as is the nature of mortal life) by countless husbands and wives through Man's history. Parental love seeks its own increase through children; and through a creative attitude to life and living.

In different words, the spontaneous expression (consequence) of parental love; is to co-create (in harmony with God's already in-progress creating) an open-ended, expanding-and-harmonious world; in which the family lives creatively. 

In a nutshell, God is like the perfection of married love, and what God wants from creation is analogous to what a loving husband and wife want, given a husband and wife who are themselves members of loving families. 

Thus (in an eternal persepctive) God wants children, and loving-developing family relations; wants new family and friends (i.e. permanent friends, maintained in harmony by analogously-familial love); wants a whole created-world of other (increasingly creative) Beings of many kinds, natures, motivations - but (ideally, and in actuality in Heaven) all maintained in Harmony by their mutual love. 

 

God made Time - Time came from love

God made Time, and it was Good...

To yearn to escape Time, to seek Time-less-ness is to reject creation; and the actual love of Beings.

Being entails Time: a being exists dynamically and through-Time. And it is Beings who love - love is between Beings, and Love happens through-Time.

Outside of Time is primordial chaos. There is no Time in chaos - this is not because nothing-happens; but because in chaos change has neither purpose nor meaning - no direction.

No Time means no meaning - no purpose, no Beings, no love.

Thus Time is part of Creation.

(Creation has direction and entails Time.) 

In the beginning (of creation) God knew Time. God is our Heavenly Parents, and with the beginning of their love for each other was the beginning of Time.

The birth of Time was love.

Before the love of our Heavenly Parents, Time only existed in the individual consciousness of the inner experience of each alone.

So Time entails consciousness; Time exists only with consciousness. The first conscious Beings were the origin of Time.

It was the mutual knowing of our Heavenly Parents (from their love) by which Time became shared, hence objective.

When there was Time, creation could begin; because Time originated in love, creation is based-on love.

Metaphysical implications of the Mormon belief in Heavenly Mother/ Mother in Heaven

*

I have previously written about the Mormon belief in a Heavenly Mother or Mother in Heaven who is God's wife, and mother to all his spirit children (including you and I).

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-mormon-folk-belief-in-gods-wife.html

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-vision-of-william-arkle-question-of.html

I have continued to read and meditate on this matter - and have been convinced that a belief in Heavenly Mother is more than just a 'folk belief' as I had supposed, but is pretty-much canonical in the CJCLDS.

This study of authoritative sources by was what finally convinced me:

https://byustudies.byu.edu/PDFViewer.aspx?title=8669&linkURL=50.1PaulsenPulidoMother-482bf17d-bbc5-4530-a7cc-c1a1b7e5b079.pdf

David L. Paulsen and Martin Pulido,""A Mother There": A Survey of Historical Teachings about Mother in Heaven", BYU Studies, 50/1 (2011)

*

The reality of a Heavenly Mother has, naturally, many profound metaphysical - as well as theological and practical - consequences.

It should be noted that the reality of a Heavenly Mother seems to be asserted mostly on the grounds of authoritative revelation; but also on 'logical' grounds that since gender - being either a man or a woman - is a fundamental, pre-mortal, mortal, and eternal reality for humans; and since humans are made in the image of God and are of the same 'kind'; it would make sense if this principle extended to God.

*

The matter of 'where did God come from?' is often answered by Mormons in terms of an infinite regress: our God was once a mortal man who was spirit child of another God - and so on. 

(This is monotheist in the sense that there is but one God for us - relevant to us, in our part of total reality; and these other Gods have absolutely nothing to do with us at all - except as a source of our God).

*

But another way to answer the question of the origin of God is that He always was.

This is what I believe (or what I choose to believe - since metaphysics are essentially a matter of choice, and stand behind Christian doctrine and not necessarily affecting or affected by it).

So, if God always was; was God the creator, the originator of Mother in Heaven? This would mean that God was the (one and only?) exception to the rule that gender is primary and fundamental - because on this model, God had either no gender or contained both genders.

Or was our Heavenly Mother also eternal - was She always? So that God the Father and Heavenly Mother are coeval and were always divine?  

*

In other words, since the Mormon understanding of divinity is within an also-existing universe with laws and realities within-which God operates; the question is whether eternity contained 'the universe' and one God (without gender) - from whom Mother in Heaven later arose in some way?

Or did eternity contain 'the universe' and two Gods - one male and one female?

I choose to believe the second: that there is no exception to the rule that gender is primary and fundamental to Man - so Heavenly Mother was coeval with God the Father: they existed as divinities from eternity.

*


Note: What about the rest of us? Did we not too exist from eternity? Yes we did - that seems necessary to explain the reality of free will/ autonomy and also evil. However we were individual essences or potentialities with no 'powers'. But only God the Father and Heavenly Mother were divine. They took these essences and we became their children - divine children. The plan of Happiness/ Plan of Salvation is the very long term hope and intention that at least some of us children will choose-to learn-to become 'adult divinities' (if I may put it that way) like to God the Father and Heavenly Mother. Just as earthly children may mature, grow and learn to become like their earthly parents; always children of their parents but now children who are also - in addition - friends. It is a yearning for loving friends to share their universe which motivated God the Father and Heavenly Mother to embark on the extraordinarily complex, contingent, risky and painful plan of salvation and happiness. Within the constraints of our universe it is, apparently, the only way for us to achieve divinity - although we are free to reject the plan, and to reject progress towards divinity and to stop at any point in the path to full God-hood. Speaking personally, I am at this point too selfishly daunted by the idea of suffering the empathic pain intrinsic to full divine parenthood to want to aspire to the highest possible theosis - and would hope to stop somewhere short of that state. But in the course of eternity no doubt this may change.

We all were born with an innate "archetype" of the real nature of God the Creator

Because God is the Creator, and our loving parents, God has ensured that we innately have everything we need in terms of understanding God and our proper relationship with God. 

(If this was not innate, then it could not be depended-upon; and obviously God wants to Make Sure that every one of their children will come into this world equipped with everything required for attaining salvation and theosis.) 

Therefore; we have innately the true "archetype" of God; and that archetype is "good parents". 

We already-know (and not from experience, but from-within, because it is built-in) what is the ideal of Good Parents - and that this is the nature of God.

This naturally and spontaneously leads to a relationship with God that is based upon Love and Trust. 

But many children develop and mature and will choose their beliefs about God (or that God is not real) and the relationship with God. And many children grow in social situations that actively encourage (and incentivize) children and adolescents to change, and often invert, their innate knowledge. 

Thus our innate understanding of the Creator God as Good Parents is usurped by one, or several, other archetype/s: Such as God the King, God the Judge, God the Totalitarian Tyrant, and/or God the Deity of philosophical abstractions. 

These other kinds of not-parental God do not lead to a relationship of Love and Trust; but to very different attitudes. If God is King then we feel like subjects. If God is Judge we feel like defendants. If God is a Totalitarian Tyrant our attitude is one of superstitious and fear-based propitiation. 

And if God is an abstract deity known philosophically; then God Just Is, Creation Just Is, and our life Just Is, and the attitude is one of fatalism. 

When we move away from our innate and archetypal understanding, we lose the ability to experience a relationship with God. 

The non-parental Gods are not personally, individually, knowable nor understandable; therefore they all open a path for human exploitation; for instance by individuals or groups claiming special expertise to know what God demands from each us. 

Furthermore, in moving away from what is spontaneous and intuitive, the alternatives feel arbitrary and incoherent; therefore belief often becomes a mixture of mutual contradictions - as when people strive to combined God and Judge or King with God as Heavenly Father; or when they strive to comprehend how God the Totalitarian Tyrant can also "love" us. 

Such contradictions lead to abstract solutions that conceal their own incoherence behind incomprehension. 

So that the proper way to "love" an incomprehensible God; necessarily becomes a special, abstract and incomprehensible kind of "love" - that is then stated to be superior to the interpersonal love of parents that we all innately do understand.   

We are born into this world with an understanding of the nature of God the Creator, and our properly loving and trusting relationship with Heavenly Parents. 

We find ourselves very far away from this reality - far away in several possible directions, and perhaps confusingly alternating between them. 

Our task is - by conscious choice - to return to that original knowledge. 

  

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.