I hope you don’t mind if I pick and choose what points to respond to since I don’t have the time to respond to everything you wrote….
I am well aware that many Christians pay lip service to the notion of libertarian free will. But their affirmation of libertarianism is nothing but hot air because libertarianism entails certain ontological commitments that Christianity rejects. What ontological commitments does libertarianism entail? A pre-existence. According to libertarianism, you are the ’uncaused, cause of your actions’. What does it mean to exist uncaused? It means you’re eternal. And if you’re eternal, you must have existed forever – even prior to your mortal birth on earth. If we are to believe in libertarian free will then we must believe in a pre-existence too. But does Christianity embrace a pre-existence? No. Mormonism does. Therefore Mormonism has the ontological resources to support libertarian free will while Christianity does not. It’s at this point the Mormon/Christian debate is pretty much over in my mind since I refuse to accept anything less than libertarianism and the consequences it entails.
The eternality of spirits was one of the fundamental teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. In a revelation recorded in the Doctrines and Covenants he wrote this:
D&C 93:29:
29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.
What a profound revelation! Our ‘intelligence’ (‘mind’ or ‘spirit’) is uncreated and therefore eternal. God did not create it, neither can he destroy it. Our spirits are co-eternal with God Himself, which is precisely what is to be expected given that libertarianism entails a pre-existence. As far as I am concerned, this one small verse from D&C 93 is of more value than the entire Bible and natural theology combined since nothing is more important than our having true free will. The Prophet made the same point about the eternality of spirits, with gusto, in his King Follet Discourse:
...the soul—the mind of man—the immortal spirit. Where did it come from? All learned men and doctors of divinity say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: the very idea lessens man in my estimation...We say that God Himself is a self-existing being...Man does exist upon the same principles...[The Bible] does not say in the Hebrew that God created the spirit of man. It says, "God made man out of the earth and put into him Adam's spirit, and so became a living body." The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal with God himself...Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it has a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal with our Father in heaven.
Preach, Brother Joe! That is good logic, indeed! It really is so refreshing to hear this instead of the vain and idiotic word-salads that usually surround the topic of free will.
This is good doctrine. It tastes good. I can taste the principles of eternal life, and so can you. They are given to me by the revelations of Jesus Christ; and I know that when I tell you these words of eternal life as they are given to me, you taste them, and I know that you believe them. You say honey is sweet, and so do I. I can also taste the spirit of eternal life. I know it is good; and when I tell you of these things which were given me by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, you are bound to receive them as sweet, and rejoice more and more.
Yes! Libertarianism tastes so good! Rejoice, rejoice!
Free will is also affirmed throughout the Mormon scriptures (while it is nowhere to be found in the NT). The Book of Mormon makes it clear in 2 Nephi 2 that the universe consists of two fundamental kinds of things: (1) things that act (things with libertarian free will), and (2) things to be acted upon (material objects).
2 Nephi 2:14:
14 And now, my sons, I speak unto you these things for your profit and learning; for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon.
‘Things to act’ and ‘things to be acted upon’. Wonderful! Where is this kind of affirmation of free will in the NT? It doesn’t exist. Instead what you find in the NT is deterministic nonsense like Romans 9 which makes God out to be the Author of Sin. Fortunately, the BoM makes it explicitly clear that Satan (not God) is the author of all sin in Helaman 6:
30 And behold, it is [Satan] who is the author of all sin. And behold, he doth carry on his works of darkness and secret murder, and doth hand down their plots, and their oaths, and their covenants, and their plans of awful wickedness, from generation to generation according as he can get hold upon the hearts of the children of men.
Meanwhile the Bible never explicitly says God is not the author of sin. In fact, there are some Bible verses that say the opposite. Isaiah 45:7 claims God is the creator of evil. Yuck! Just one of the many advantages of the BoM over the Bible.
But let’s return back to the ‘eternality of spirits’. Since we are self-existent spirits, this means we are fundamentally the same kind of beings as God. There is no impenetrable barrier between Creator and creature in Mormonism like there is in other religions. We are gods-in-embryo and there is nothing stopping us from improving ourselves until we become exactly like God currently is. This is the Mormon doctrine of ‘eternal progression’. Now This is the Mormon doctrine of exaltation. Now we see how Mormon doctrines the following three intimately connected to each other: (1) pre-mortal existence, (2) libertarian free will, and (3) exaltation. Just a coincidence? Joseph Smith stumbled on one heck of an internally consistent philosophical coincidence.
Another advantage of the doctrine of the ‘eternality of spirits’ is I believe it explains the eternal nature of God’s rewards/punishments. Have you ever wondered why God’s punishments/rewards are of an eternal nature? Why doesn’t God simply annihilate people instead of punishing them forever? Mormonism has an answer: spirits are indestructible, so not even God has the power to destroy them. This means if God is going to punish/reward another spirit then it must be on an eternal scale. Hence the eternal nature of God’s rewards/punishments. That makes good sense. What answer does Christianity have?
I think Origen might have actually advocated that, haha, but yeah, it's traditionally been a fringe view among Christians. I don't see the advantage in it, though.
The first advantage of a pre-mortal existence has to do with what I explained earlier regarding libertarianism. Another advantage of a pre-mortal existence is that I believe it makes the problem of evil more tractable. If I found out some of the suffering in the world was due to someone sinning in the pre-existence, then I would find it less offensive.
If anything, given the args of natural theology, it hits against creatio ex nihilo (or creatio ex Deo, even),
It only hits against cosmological argument; not design arguments. There’s nothing stopping someone from embracing both teleological arguments and a pre-existence.
But there is a serious tension between creation ex nihilo (cosmological arguments) and a pre-existence. You can’t have both. You must choose one or the other. And since I think libertarianism entails a pre-existence, I will choose the pre-existence every single time.
But you’re mostly right. Libertarianism and a pre-existence are totally at odds with creation ex nihilo. You must choose one or the other(s). And once you rightfully choose libertarianism and reject creation ex nihilo (and the natural theology that supports it) then you must also embrace a pre-existence. But if you embrace a pre-existence, then you’re pretty much done with Christianity. You are pretty much done with Christianity anyways if you embrace the arguments from natural theology since those arguments fail to prove the existence of a personal God. They also fail to prove a Trinity. To be perfectly honest, I think the arguments from natural theology are totally irrelevant to Christianity, especially when the epistemology of NT insists on God’s spirit as the source of knowledge about God (not arguments from natural theology).
How is [salvation for little children] characteristic of Mormonism but not Christianity?
Infant damnation seems like an inescapable consequence of “original sin”. It’s a good thing there is no ‘original sin’ in Mormonism. According to Mormonism, children who die at young age were so righteous in the pre-mortal existence that all they needed to do in this mortal life was gain a physical body and nothing else. They are guaranteed to receive the highest level of exaltation. This is a wonderful alternative compared to what a sicko like St. Augustine had to say about the eternal destiny of dead infants. According to Brother Joseph, God called certain Christian doctrines an ‘abomination in his sight’ and when I consider ‘infant damnation’ I don’t find Joseph’s story hard to believe at all.