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Celestial kingdoms...


Ripheus23

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In the LDS system, there is a paradox in the references to God as one. This is because the oneness enfolds the Son and the Spirit into it, without being Trinitarian, and in the context of exaltation and parallel universes no less. So, the easiest gloss of the situation is that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three gods.

Now, the Father (with the Heavenly Mother) authored the lives of the spirit-children who became physical humanity, and it was the Son Who authored the physical Earth directly (working off the "model" given Him by the Father). So, the Son is a sort of demiurge, in the LDS system.

It's a mystery why there's a third person in the LDS Godhead. Maybe high-level members of the Church "know" the answer to this, but it's not taught publicly, and no ex-members I'm aware of have written about the topic. But the Holy Spirit is God without having a body yet, whereas the Father and Son have bodies.

So what hath the Cosmere to do with all this Jerusalem? One of the reasons the three are "God" is because each gets a special eschatonic "kingdom" assigned to Them. The Spirit gets "the telestial kingdom," where He alone will minister to those who dwell there. The Son is over "the terrestrial kingdom" although the Spirit will visit there, too, and finally the Father is over "the celestial kingdom," where He works with the other two nevertheless.

I don't think these kingdoms map onto the three Realms in Realmatic theory. First off, there's also an "outer darkness" and a multiverse-level "Beyond" in LDS afterlife cosmology. So, let's suppose the afterlife kingdoms would be comparable to divisions in the Spiritual Realm. (There's actually supposed to be another threefold division in the celestial kingdom itself...!)

My hypothesis is that the Shards represent different forms, not just of creation, but also of "salvation," or afterlife-related concepts. Their divinity is somewhere in-between that of the Son and the Spirit in LDS theology. Now, different kinds/degrees of justification go, in Christianity, with whether one is saved at all, and if so, whether one has to go through Purgatory to get to Heaven (as with Catholics) or which of the three "kingdoms" one might end up in (as with Mormons), and so on. So the Shards represent forms/states of creation, justification, salvation, sanctification, glorification, and exaltation. Ruin corresponds to "annihilationism" (the theory that God outright destroys the wicked at the end of time) whereas Odium corresponds to something similar to the classical/mainstream idea of Hell, only in Odium's case things are compounded(!) in that Rayse wants everyone to go to Hell, if possible.

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Brandon's said he doesn't want to touch on a true "afterlife" in the sense of heaven or hell, because he wants to leave that up to the readers. And also, because if he confirmed an afterlife or a true God, that would invalidate some of his characters' beliefs, like Jasnah being an atheist.

So while I'm sure that LDS scripture has an influence on his writing, he's not going to dabble much in those waters in his writing.

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11 hours ago, RShara said:

And also, because if he confirmed an afterlife or a true God, that would invalidate some of his characters' beliefs, like Jasnah being an atheist.

I’m pretty sure her atheism ended the moment she learned about the Shards and Adonalsium; by any meaningful definition, they are at least little-g deities.

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9 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

I’m pretty sure her atheism ended the moment she learned about the Shards and Adonalsium; by any meaningful definition, they are at least little-g deities.

Nope. She does not accept that they are deities or gods. Just large chunks of power.

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5 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

I’m pretty sure her atheism ended the moment she learned about the Shards and Adonalsium; by any meaningful definition, they are at least little-g deities.

Depends on what you call atheism. 

Believing in beings of exceptional power that, sure she believes in that. 

Believing in an all powerful, all knowing creator who deserves to be worshipped? I doubt it. 

As Hoid says... 

Quote

“You’re so convinced that there is no God.”
“The Almighty is—”
“Oh,” Wit said, “I don’t mean the Almighty. Tanavast was a fine enough fellow—bought me drinks once—but he was not God.

I think it's a fair distinction to make. As an atheist myself, if the Shards were real and existed in our world, they wouldn't invalidate my view. Extreme power is not what "God" means to me personally.

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1 hour ago, Calderis said:

Depends on what you call atheism. 

Believing in beings of exceptional power that, sure she believes in that. 

Believing in an all powerful, all knowing creator who deserves to be worshipped? I doubt it.

I support that notion. Especially the scholarly part of her should have no problem to accept the fact, that there are beings more powerful than herself, maybe even so powerful and abstract that she can't completely unterstand them.

But that is something completely different from believing in a god that watches over you/ jugdes what you do/...

A power you can strife to unterstand, something that will never be possible with god, imo.

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I’m pretty sure Brandon has even said his idea behind the Cosmere is “what would happen if normal people were given the power of the gods?” I’ve seen a similarly worded WoB anyways. So I don’t think the intention is for the Shardholders to equal divinities. It makes sense why certain in-world characters would view them that way though. That conversation between Hoid and Jasnah seemed intentionally placed to me for Brandon to signify that there is an idea of a true God in the Cosmere that some in-world characters believe in while others don’t. 

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17 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Fair enough, the only problem with that is by that definition polytheists, deists, pantheists and pandeists are all atheists. Historically, the majority of theists DIDN’T believe in a big-G deity.

And I'm in no way trying to invalidate those. But the Shards are not naturally occurring gods. 

If we developed a technology that could grant an individual the same type of power, they wouldn't be "gods" in most people's minds. 

The Shards are ascended mortals. 

If Adonalsium developed in the way that I think it did, I'm very curious as to what Jasnah's beliefs there would be though. Because that, in my mind at least, is very much a god. 

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I'm thinking that Odium thinks of himself as along the lines of a true god, or worthy of worship. The legend of Marduk and the legend of the Jade Emperor both involve, IIRC, a "lesser" or even once-mortal divine being, to be appointed over an entire celestial hierarchy. Maybe he thinks he can cultivate his specific power so as to become the dominant entity, and he believes that this will be metaphysically sufficient for himself to count as "the highest god," as such.

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This topic has somewhat interested me while reading Sanderson's Cosmere Books. I love the study of Religion in general, and I love seeing how Snaderson created the general facets of many of the religions in his books. 

Being a Mormon myself, I tend to look for similar stories, or similar precepts among religions in the Cosmere, and among his works, and while there are some, I don't believe that Brandon got his main inspiration for any of the Shards directly from LDS beliefs. 

There are similar ideas, like Sazed constantly searching for the true religion. Some parts of that resonate similar to Joseph Smith, however there are other parts that demonstrate that if Joseph Smith's story was part of the inspiration for Sazed's, it definitely wasn't the only inspiration. 

However, it seems like the general belief systems of "Where did I come from? Why am I here? and Where am I going?" are all drastically different from and unrelated to LDS tenets, for the most part. 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Calderis said:

And I'm in no way trying to invalidate those. But the Shards are not naturally occurring gods. 

If we developed a technology that could grant an individual the same type of power, they wouldn't be "gods" in most people's minds. 

The Shards are ascended mortals. 

If Adonalsium developed in the way that I think it did, I'm very curious as to what Jasnah's beliefs there would be though. Because that, in my mind at least, is very much a god. 

Fair enough. But didn't Hoid actually mention Adonalsium to Jasnah when they were travelling together? Or am I misremembering the rest of that conversation that occurred after the part quoted above?

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10 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Fair enough. But didn't Hoid actually mention Adonalsium to Jasnah when they were travelling together? Or am I misremembering the rest of that conversation that occurred after the part quoted above?

I can see how it could be interpreted that way, but that was definitely not my take on it. 

Quote

“I suppose that you’re going to tell me where you think I should look.”

“You’ll find God in the same place you’re going to find salvation from this mess,” Wit said. “Inside the hearts of men.”

“Curiously,” Jasnah said, “I believe I can actually agree with that, though I suspect for different reasons than you imply. Perhaps this walk won’t be as bad as I had feared.”

It seems to me, by that quote, that Hoid is a believer in the God Beyond. 

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22 minutes ago, Calderis said:

I can see how it could be interpreted that way, but that was definitely not my take on it. 

It seems to me, by that quote, that Hoid is a believer in the God Beyond. 

Ah, okay. Yeah I totally misremembered how that scene ended. For some reason I was thinking that it ended with Hoid saying something along the lines of “Allow me to tell you the story of Adonalsium.” or something like that.

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Just now, Steeldancer said:

I think Jasnah would accept the existence of Adonalsium, but not worship it. God Beyond, Jasnah would probably question. 

I agree. Adonalsium was a being of immense power, but he was obviously not unstoppable or infinite. I think the God Beyond is Adonalsium. Him being called this because he was god and passed beyond. Honestly, I don't think there really is a Beyond. While it isn't a subject that will be addressed in the books, I'm fairly sure the investiture is just returned to the universe or fades away.

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Yeah, the question of the Beyond has nothing to do with the investiture that composes someone. If the Beyond is real, it's something else. The investiture can't leave the system. Even that's up for debate in world though. 

Quote

Questioner

So, if Nightblood, unsheathed, killed someone, would their soul still go to the Beyond?

Brandon Sanderson

So, that's gonna be a matter of-- There's gonna be disagreement in the cosmere about that. Nobody has been able to actively test it, because there are certain things you can see, but there are people who are actively discussing this concept.

Questioner

So, no one knows for sure?

Brandon Sanderson

Nobody knows for sure. And I'll just leave it at that. It's an astute question that even Vasher has-- Vasher has his thoughts, but he does not have a definitive answer, and others disagree with him.

source

 

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1 hour ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

I love how Brandon acts like even he doesn’t know the answer to questions like this. It’s entirely up to him, he’s the ‘God Beyond’ after all. He created the Cosmere and all its rules. :P

Well I am sure that Brandon believes that there is a God Beyond, but that he doesn't want to come out and say that, because of the aforementioned leave-up-to-each-person's-beliefs. So he's always very careful when he replies to those questions, to make sure he doesn't invalidate anything.

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23 hours ago, Calderis said:

I can see how it could be interpreted that way, but that was definitely not my take on it. 

It seems to me, by that quote, that Hoid is a believer in the God Beyond. 

You know, I think that's an interesting interpretation.  Im on the other side of the coin: I consider myself a believer, but I read that in the opposite way, that Hoid didnt believe in any actual Capital-G god.  It sounded like that common, somewhat tropey statement that there is no God or Devil, just lots of good and bad people out there. 

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In the original post there are several incorrect statements about how the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints understand the Godhead, and how kingdoms are governed, and a couple other misstatements. I am a lifelong member, and have studied our theology and other religions theology extensively, -and have taught ours extensively. It really appears that there was an intent of the original poster to make a discussion about those things by trolling them and then tying them very loosely to Brandon's writings. Brandon has clearly said he does not match any of his writings to his theological views. He admits he may be influenced by them. But there is no correlation as described by the OP. 

I don't know what the goal was, but sowing misinformation to start is a rotten way to get a discussion. I hope that wasn't the goal. I appreciate the way the community here has responded, as fans of the books. It is both kind and professional, but I did not want to have the OP statements taken at face value about our beliefs. You can go to several of many official sites, and have those subjects of our beliefs correctly explained..

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On 8/17/2018 at 4:23 PM, 1stBondsmith said:

In the original post there are several incorrect statements about how the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints understand the Godhead,

Thanks for pointing this out. I only know LDS from mormon.org and Wikipedia, but the idea that Jesus is a demiurge who created the Earth is not something I'd ever heard; it sounds completely made up.

Many fantasy authors do copypaste their religion's theology into their fiction. Tolkein is famous not only for doing it, but for believing it was a sin not to. And sometimes they lie; Robert Jordan claimed not to be doing it, but fandom eventually found out he was a Freemason and held organized religion in disdain, which is what we see in his books. So I understand the impulse to go assuming Brandon is doing it too, but I believe Brandon is actually different and isn't doing it.

edit: I regret writing this. I dislike theories that claim Brandon's cosmology is from LDS, as I think it's stereotyping, and we shouldn't stereotype people by their religion, or anything else. But I shouldn't talk about religion because nothing good comes of talking about it.

Edited by Morsk
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