WASHINGTON – Republican Mike Huckabee personally apologized on Wednesday to presidential rival Mitt Romney for comments he made in a New York Times interview that seemed to criticize the Mormon faith.
Huckabee came up to Romney after the GOP debate in Johnson, Iowa, to reconcile.
“I said, I would never try, ever to try to somehow pick out some point of your faith and make it an issue, and I wouldn’t,” Huckabee said, according to CNN.
“I’ve stayed away from talking about Mitt Romney’s faith,” he added. “I told him face-to-face, I said I don’t think your being a Mormon ought to make you more or less qualified for being a president.”
The former Arkansas governor had been tight-lipped about Romney’s Mormon faith up until the comment which is to appear in Sunday’s New York Times.
In a preview of the article posted on the New York Times website, the former Arkansas governor was quoted as saying, “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”
According to the Huckabee campaign, the comment was taken out of context during an extensive interview. His campaign contends that given the full context, it was “clear” that he was unwilling to answer questions on Mormonism.
Senior advisor Dr. Charmaine Yoest added, “He wants to assure persons of all faith traditions of his firm commitment to religious tolerance and freedom of worship.
“Governor Huckabee believes that one of the great strengths of our nation lies in its diversity of thought, opinion.”
Huckabee himself also explained the question was not meant to be a jab at Mormonism.
“We were having a conversation over several hours, the conversation was about religion and he was trying to press me on my thoughts of Mitt Romney’s religion, and I said ‘I don’t want to go there,’” Huckabee said to CNN.
New York Times reporter Zev Chafets had asked Huckabee whether he thought Mormonism was a religion or a cult.
“I really didn’t know. Well, he was telling me things about the Mormon faith, because he frankly is well-schooled on comparative religions. As part of that conversation, I asked the question, because I had heard that, and I asked it, not to create something – I never thought it would make the story,” he explained.
Last week, Huckabee had refused to comment on Mormonism even during the height of curiosity and media frenzy ahead of Romney’s major speech on religion. When pressed for opinions, Huckabee responded that it wasn’t his place to “go off into evaluating” other candidates’ faiths, which he thinks is not the role of a president, according to The Associated Press.
The contrast between his determination to not criticize Mormonism versus the disparaging remark in the interview caused uproar.
“I think attacking someone’s religion is really going too far,” Romney countered on NBC’s “Today” show on Wednesday. “It’s just not the American way and I think people will reject that.”
After making the apology, Huckabee said Romney was “gracious” in the exchange. Romney’s campaign confirmed that the former Massachusetts governor accepted the apology.
Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, recently took the lead from Romney in Iowa polls riding on the votes of evangelicals – who make up anywhere from 30-50 percent of caucus goers. The competition for Christian voters in conservative Iowa has put Huckabee and Romney in a head-to-head battle.
Comments
Hes, Let me know when you're ready to study the historical faith that was given to the apostles and prophets of old. I pray that one day soon God will reveal Himself to you and that you will know that there is a God worth worshipping.
“Judaism had two great incarnational symbols. Temple and Torah: Jesus seems to have believed it was his vocation to upstage the one and outflank the other. Judaism spoke of the presence of her God in her midst, in the pillar of cloud and fire, in the Presence (“Shekinah”) in the Temple. Jesus acted and spoke as if he thought he were a one-man counter-temple movement... The Shekinah glory turns out to have a human face.”
“The death of God’s son can only reveal God’s love (as in, e.g., Rom 5:6-10) if the son is the personal expression of God himself. It will hardly do to say “I love you so much that I’m going to send someone else.” There is an interesting distinction here between Mormonism’s polytheistic definition of The Trinity, whereby God became flesh and dwelt among us.
“Long before anyone talked about “nature” and “substance,” “person,” and “Trinity,” the early Christians had quietly but definitely discovered that they could say what they felt obliged to say about Jesus (and the Spirit) by telling the Jewish story of God, Israel and the world, in the Jewish language of Spirit, Word, Torah, Presence/Glory Wisdom, and now Messiah/Son.“
–NT Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God
“For the loyal Jew, from that day to this, the fundamental confession of faith is, ‘Hear O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is one.’” This was prayed three times a day and was the most basic Jewish conviction.
-N. T. Wright, Judas and the Gospel of Jesus p 116 (Deut. 6:4). He argues that the current understanding of Jesus must be connected with what is known to be true about him from the historical perspective of first-century Judaism and Christianity. In addition to his doctorate degrees from Merton College, Oxford University, he also has been awarded several honorary doctorate degrees,[1] most recently from Durham University in July 2007.
You asked about the nature of Christ and the immutability of God. There is a connection to our topic of deification that underlines both the nature of Christ and the Jewish understanding of God. I took a look at N.T. Wright’s work, Jesus and the Identity of God which examines the cultural context of His claim of being YHWH. For the historian it is imperative to understand the times and customs of any piece of literature that is to be taken seriously if one is to comprehend underlying meanings and terminology.
Pre-incarnation, Jesus did not have a natural body that was subject to our physical laws. We can only speculate what exactly He was like in relationship to our physical laws. We know that He was there at the beginning of time (presumably our time). He was in fact YHWH (John 1:1). By Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible (Col 1:16). Isaiah calls Him the everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6).
A Christophany is a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ. In the book of Daniel, Christ appears in a vision to Daniel (7:13-14). He was never a pre-mortal spirit, the Bible never so much as even hints to the idea. His essential nature has never changed. Paul said, “By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed (manifested) in the flesh…” Just how YHWH was able to become a baby and grow as a normal boy into manhood is a mystery according to Paul. He grew up from an infant into a man. Obviously He did not start speaking and walking the day He was born. At some point Christ assumed the role and identity of the Messiah (Mark 14:62): the incarnation of YHWH (Ex.3:14; John 8:58). He acted with the authority of YHWH in such ways as forgiving sins, when the only designated authority for such actions was God (Luke 5:17-26). Jesus also claimed to be YHWH and permitted Himself to be worshiped, both before and after the resurrection (this is mentioned by LDS officials themselves). The point here is that YHWH was manifested in the flesh; it was Jesus fulfilling the messianic covenant prophesied of old. YHWH, Israel’s King came to deliver His people. He came unto His own and His own received Him not. Thence, it became the time of the Gentiles as prophesied, whereby “God commands all people to repent. For He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the man He chose long ago. And God has proven this to everyone by raising that man from the dead!” (ACTS 17:30-31) Interesting note, the term “proved” is used here. Evidence is a prerequisite to Christian faith. It may not require as much proof for one to believe compared to another, but it nevertheless is not omitted.
I thought I lost you Hes. I’m going to pass along my email info along to you, just in case we lose each other on here. Feel free to save it to your PC and email me whenever. It is seedplanter1@sbcglobal.net
Should I suppose that you are conceding that deification is not early church evidence of eternal progression? If I don't here any applicable information on the issue, I'm going to assume so.
Allow me to clarify what I said; Jesus’ death was the culmination of all of the prior temple rituals that God commanded Moses to perform. Indeed He did act as a one-man counter-temple movement. Jesus vehemently criticized the religious leaders of His day. He criticized their vain religious laws, their self-righteousness, their inability to know and discern who He is and what God was doing, He condemned their greed and self-ambition. He drove the money changers out. Jesus did not say, “Let this be a house of secret rituals,” but rather, “My house shall be called a house of prayer.” The only hope that Mormonism has of become acceptable to Christians is to strip away the cultural context of Scripture and change the definitions. Have you accepted my challenge to read the Book of Acts for temple passages? The early church devoted themselves to the Word, to prayer and to evangelism.
Examine this passage to see Jesus’ thoughts about centralized temple worship:
"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."
Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he." John 4:19-26
Jesus is the temple and we are the temple. When Jesus died, He ripped the veil in two.
At any rate, Mormon temple rituals have more in common with Masonry than Judaism.
Hesadanza,
You said the temple is the House of the Lord...
As is the church. Insomuch as a church is a building, so is a temple. It is nothing more. If you wish to give it more credit than that, what will happen if your temple burns down? Can you not hear from God until you build a new one? Can you not gather together and perform the same "ordinances of His gospel"? If not, then your god is truly impotent.
We meet together in our building to do what His Word says. We worship and praise Him together in unity. We are taught. We fellowship with Him and each other. If that building were to burn down, nothing would change. We still would meet together to worship and praise and learn. The Word of God says the where two or more are gathered together in His name, He is there in their midst. That is true church. Only those who are carnally minded cannot grasp that. The early Christians met in homes. Because they understood the concept of where the temple truly was. It's not brick and mortar.
Those of the Spirit will understand and their ears will hear. They will be free from bondage of religion and tradition. They will be free from the law
Going to church and worshiping Him there is different than going to the temple and performing ordinances of His gospel there. The temple is a special sacred place that is different than a church building (chapel). It is the House of the Lord.
Hes,
Duh! Of course He didn't do away with going to church and worshipping Him. Why would you think that?
Christ's death did not bring an end to temple worship. I have already shown numerous times throughout the New Testament where the early Christians worshiped in the temple.
Alright Hes, on to more dramatic things: There is a connection to the topic of deification that underlines both the nature of Christ and the cultural context of His claim of being YHWH. One of the most historically pivotal questions raised about Christ is why did the Jewish Sanhedrin sentenced Him to death? Obviously it was not because they believed in eternal progression. If the Jews thought that everyone was a god or had the potential to become gods in the sense that Mormons believe, then it would not have been strange or blasphemous for Jesus to claim to be a god. Of course, this is not what Christ claimed directly, but rather that He was YHWH in skin, God incarnate, Immanuel. He literally was the embodiment of the Shekinah glory. He was the temple of God. When He died the veil that separated man from God was rent in two, signifying the culmination of all of the temple ritualistic sacrifices were satisfied in one death.
The points are as follows:
1. Historic Judaism as YHWH’s revelation to Moses did not include the concept of eternal progression.
2. Christ claimed not merely to be a god, but YHWH Himself.
3. It incensed the court to condemn Him.
4. His death brought an end to the temple rituals.
5. His blood pays for our salvation.
N.T. Wright notes, “Judaism had two great incarnational symbols. Temple and Torah: Jesus seems to have believed it was his vocation to upstage the one and outflank the other. Judaism spoke of the presence of her God in her midst, in the pillar of cloud and fire, in the Presence (“Shekinah”) in the Temple. Jesus acted and spoke as if he thought he were a one-man counter-temple movement... The Shekinah glory turns out to have a human face.” “For the loyal Jew, from that day to this, the fundamental confession of faith is, ‘Hear O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is one.’” This was prayed three times a day and was the most basic Jewish conviction.” N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Identity of God and Judas and the Gospel of Jesus (Deut. 6:4).
The crucial Christian assertion, that God is One, sets an absolute limit on the meaning of theosis - it is not possible for any created being to become, ontologically, God, or even part of God (the henosis of Greek Neoplatonic philosophy).
That "God became God" is not only a pagan idea but it denies the very nature of God Himself, by rejecting His eternality as God (cf. Is. 43:10, LXX: "...So that you may know and believe Me and understand that I AM..." Notice "I AM" in the Greek LXX and not "I am He" as with 41:4. Jesus makes the same claim in John 8:24: "Unless you believe that I AM you will die in your sins"; cf. Gk.).
McGrath notes that it is "the Augustinian understanding of justification as both event and process, embracing the beginning, continuation, and perfection of the Christian life, and thereby subsuming regeneration under justification. More specifically, St. Augustine integrated theosis within his concept of justification, as Lampe explains: "Augustine makes much use of the idea of deification which he equates with sonship towards God. Justification implies deification, because by justifying men God makes them his sons; if we have been made sons of God (Jn. 1:12) we have also been made gods, not through a natural begetting but through the grace of adoption." In Augustine’s one words, "God wishes to make you a god, not by nature like him whom he begat, but by his gift and adoption. For as he through humanity became partaker of your mortality, so through exaltation he makes you partaker of his immortality" (serm. 166.4) [47]. And similarly: "It is clear that He (i.e. God) calls men gods through their being deified by His grace and not born of His substance. For He justifies, who is just of Himself and not of another; and He deifies, who is God of Himself and not by participation in another. Now He who justifies, Himself deifies, because by justifying He makes sons of God. For to them gave He power to become the sons of God. If we are made sons of God, we are also made gods; but this is by grace of adoption, and not by generation (Ennar. In Ps. 49, 2)’.
Theosis is not the same thing as Mormonism's eternal progression. Allow me to emphasize the following notation that I posted earlier: “Even if one were to say there is participation in the nature of God, this would not mean that a creature becomes God by nature, but that the nature of God is present in the being of the other entity, transforming it into a new mode of being.” Gregory of Nazianzus: Images and Reflections. Edited by JOSTEIN BØRTNES and TOMAS HÄGG, p. 270.
In other words, deification is not becoming like God in the Mormon sense. Since you posted theosis days ago, I have done my research on it. There is no continuity between the two. Not only is eternal progression not found in the early church fathers’ theosis, neither is it found in historic Judaism which I am prepared to argue at length as well.
Happy New Year!
Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. Isaiah 43:10
Protestant scholar Allister McGrath points out, that "A deliberate and systematic distinction is made between the concept of justification itself (understood as the extrinsic divine pronouncement of man’s new status) and the concept of sanctification or regeneration (understood as the intrinsic process by which God renews the justified sinner)." He goes on to explain that: "The significance of the Protestant distinction between iustificatio and regeneratio is that a fundamental discontinuity has been introduced into the western theological tradition where none had existed before…The Reformation understanding of the nature of justification – as opposed to its mode – must therefore be regarded as a genuine theological novum.
“There is… [a] reason why Gregory’s doctrine of deification should not be taken in this radical sense, namely that he admits the terminology of participation. A doctrine of participation would normally hold that when one thing participates in another, a difference between them is indicated. Participation takes place across a line of division. When things of different hypostasis or different ontological status stand in a relation of participation, one entry, because of its receptivity, receives certain characteristics from the other, but without achieving identity with that other in essence. Even if one were to say there is participation in the nature of God, this would not mean that a creature becomes God by nature, but that the nature of God is present in the being of the other entity, transforming it into a new mode of being.” Gregory of Nazianzus: Images and Reflections. Edited by JOSTEIN BØRTNES (Russian Literature at the University of Bergen, former University Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo, in Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge and Director of Studies at Sidney Sussex College. He is the author of 'Visions of Glory' (1988) and has published extensively in the fields of Early and Modern Russian Literature, Literary Theory and Greek Patristic Literature. At present, Jostein Børtnes is working on Mikhail Bakhtin, and on the Cappadocian fathers, in particular on Gregory of Nazianz.) and TOMAS HÄGG, p. 270.
Continued…
Now let’s see what your Mormon quotation looks like in its context: “But in the version of the Seventy it is written, Behold, ye die like men, and fall like one of the princes, in order to manifest the disobedience of men,--I mean of Adam and Eve,--and the fall of one of the princes, i.e., of him who was called the serpent, who fell with a great overthrow, because he deceived Eve. But as my discourse is not intended to touch on this point, but to prove to you that the Holy Ghost reproaches men because they were made like God, free from suffering and death, provided that they kept His commandments, and were deemed deserving of the name of His sons, and yet they, becoming like Adam and Eve, work out death for themselves; let the interpretation of the Psalm be held just as you wish, yet thereby it is demonstrated that all men are deemed worthy of becoming "gods," and of having power to become sons of the Highest; and shall be each by himself judged and condemned like Adam and Eve.” St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho.
Theosis is obviously referring to salvation in this context.
Here is another quote from Justin Martyr that reveals the dichotomy of our corruptible nature apart from Christ, “For those things which exist after God, or shall at any time exist, these have the nature of decay, and are such as may be blotted out and cease to exist; for God alone is unbegotten and incorruptible, and therefore He is God, but all other things after Him are created and corruptible.” Dialogue with Trypho