Talk:D&C 88:1-5

From Feast upon the Word (http://feastupontheword.org). Copyright, Feast upon the Word.

Verses 3-7 and on

I'm sort of confused by this section. When I outline it I see a long string of things:

• comforter is the Holy Spirit of Promise
• promise is the promise of eternal life
• eternal life is the glory of the celestial kingdom
• glory is that of the church of the Firstborn
• first born is Jesus Christ
• Jesus Christ is the light of truth
• truth is the light of christ
• light of christ is ...

At this point the pattern breaks down, but I think the same thing is sort of going on. Not sure what to make of this whole collage of concepts/images that we are told are all sort of the same thing. Any thoughts? --Matthew Faulconer 07:30, 14 August 2007 (CEST)

Hmmm. I'm inclined to read the "even" wording as more of a "subset" modifier rather than a strict equivalence. So the Comforter is the Holy Spirit of promise in the sense that one thing the Comforter does is promise us eternal life. And at least one way to think about eternal life is in terms of the glory of the celestial kingdom, and this glory of the celestial kingdom includes at least the glory of the church of the Firstborn. Finally, and perhaps supportive of my view, Jesus Christ is, among other things, the light of truth.

But this whole section is mighty intimidating for me to try and make sense of. I'm inclined to think of this passage as sort of disrupting our modern tendency to carve things up into separable entities and ideas. The comforter, by this set of connections, is intimately related to truth, Christ, the Church of the Firstborn, etc. Like in John 17 where we are commanded to be one, I tend to think along the same lines, of not a strict equivalence, but in some sort of closely related way (I know I'm contradicting my own "subset" idea above, but I want to back off that wording, and say something more like "a lot of overlap" or "sort of the same thing" as you put it".... --RobertC 21:20, 15 August 2007 (CEST)