Trinitarian Or Modal: Dancing On Pinheads?

[DonBradley]

Wade, I agree. The idea of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost agreeing in what they will makes perfect sense. The idea of them sharing the same faculty of will is absurd, unless they are supposed to be understood as the same person, as in modalism.

Anakin, no worries. I thought you were asking how I thought the relationship within the Godhead works. I don't know much detail about how the dynamics of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost interacting is understood in the creeds. I know some, which I've expressed here, and a little more about the notions of eternal begetting and procession, etc.

Don

[Rob Bowman]

Don,

I'd like again to express my appreciation for your thoughtful posts. Here I will comment briefly on your first post in this thread.

The sociality of the three persons in Trinitarianism is indeed a significant difference from modalism or monarchianism. It isn't necessary to hold to "social Trinitarianism" per se to agree with the point about the mutual personal relations among the three, but obviously social Trinitarianism underscores that point.

I disagree with Ostler's proposal that Mormon theology is a form of social Trinitarianism, although Ostler's particular reinterpretation of Mormon theology is rather closer to social Trinitarianism than the more standard LDS doctrine that is rooted in Joseph Smith's 1844 teachings in the King Follett Discourse and the Sermon at the Grove. Back in 2010 on this forum I presented five differences between LDS theology and social Trinitarianism. I think the argument I presented then holds up pretty well.

You wrote:

And Trinitarianism is, in my judgment, far superior to modalism in its implications--it makes God more sociable, approachable, and comprehensible; accounts better for God's moral nature and creation of us; and seems more compatible with a doctrine of deification, in which divinity is something that can be shared, rather than simply the attribute of a single individual entity. In fact, the reason Athanasius (of Athanasian Creed fame) insisted so strongly on a Trinity, as opposed to Arius' doctrine of Christ as the first creation of the Father (the one divine person) was precisely because Athanasius was so set on deification: Christ's divinity provided an Incarnation, and incarnation meant there was a point of contact between God and man (since Christ was both God and man). It was Athanasius who, as I understand it, coined the phrase, "God became man in order that man might become God." So, at least to some extent, the doctrine of the Trinity was an outgrowth of early Christian belief in deification--a fact that should perhaps earn it more respect in present circles.

Since I am extremely strong on deification (what other ultimate point to our existence could there be?) and see it as the heart of the Christian message, of the Gospel, with salvation just being deification, I can't help seeing a doctrine compatible with deification is far superior to one alien to it.

The post mentioned above explains why I don't agree that social Trinitarianism opens the door to deification in the LDS sense. There is just as wide of a gulf between the patristic and LDS doctrines of deification as there is between social Trinitarianism and LDS theology. I discussed those differences regarding deification last year on the Parchment & Pen blog in an essay responding to Dan Peterson on theosis. Due to the focus and limitations of that essay, I didn't discuss Athanasius's famous statement (which Dan had also not mentioned in his very brief article). However, the theological differences discussed in that essay apply equally to Athanasius's position. Let me quote a chunk of the passage in which Athanasius made his famous remark (quoting it as commonly translated):

"As, then, if a man should wish to see God, Who is invisible by nature and not seen at all, he may know and apprehend Him from His works: so let him who fails to see Christ with his understanding, at least apprehend Him by the works of His body, and test whether they be human works or God's works. 2. And if they be human, let him scoff; but if they are not human, but of God, let him recognise it, and not laugh at what is no matter for scoffing; but rather let him marvel that by so ordinary a means things divine have been manifested to us, and that by death immortality has reached to all, and that by the Word becoming man, the universal Providence has been known, and its Giver and Artificer the very Word of God. 3. For He was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality. For while He Himself was in no way injured, being impassible and incorruptible and very Word and God, men who were suffering, and for whose sakes He endured all this, He maintained and preserved in His own impassibility" (On the Incarnation of the Word 54.1-3, emphasis added).

Athanasius here shows emphatically that he holds to the classic theistic doctrines of God's essential invisibility and impassibility. The divine nature of the Logos-Son was not changed at all by the Incarnation. He who was invisible and immortal by nature took on humanity's visible, mortal, bodily nature so that he might redeem us and make us immortal. If you read the earlier part of Athanasius's book you'll find that he held to other classic elements of theism that are incompatible with the LDS doctrine, such as the creation of human beings ex nihilo (44.1).

The English translation is actually somewhat misleading with regard to the most famous statement in the above passage. The Greek text reads as follows: autos gar enenthropesen hina hemeis theopoiethomen. The verbal symmetry one sees in the English translation is not there in the Greek, which woodenly translated says something like "For he was caused to be in man so that we might be made god." "For he was humanized that we might be deified" is another, preferable translation that has been proposed. The word theopoiethomen, "deified," in patristic usage was something of a technical term for being made like God; it did not mean, as its etymology might suggest, that man was being literally made God.

[Storm Rider]

In my reading of the ECF it is more than evident that they were far more comfortable with the thought and language of man becoming gods. The mere thought of such today catches more Christians in the throat and they are loath to state it so plainly.

As far as the doctrine of the Trinity goes, at no point during the time of Christ ministry on earth was this doctrine presented as a required belief of the early disciples. In fact, is was virtually a non-existent focus of his teachings. Having said this, the LDS Church does teach the importance of knowing the nature of God, but I think the context of that knowing is to understand that the purpose of God's creation is to bring his children into his presence, in other words offer exaltation to each of them. Knowing the nature of God assists us to know that we are his children and what is possible.

It will be a good day when more Christian teachers use the langauge of deification plainly rather than state it and then back away from it so quickly. Christ became man that man might become god. So many of the ECF taught the same thing just as plainly.

[wenglund]

Back in 2010 on this forum I presented five differences between LDS theology and social Trinitarianism. I think the argument I presented then holds up pretty well.

As always, your arguments, as with anyone's arguments, hold up with the readers only to the extent that the readers agree with your premises and interpretation of the data.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Rob Bowman]

Wade,

You wrote:

As always, your arguments, as with anyone's arguments, hold up with the readers only to the extent that the readers agree with your premises and interpretation of the data.

If this is so with anyone's arguments, why do you feel the need to make this point incessantly regarding my arguments? Do you suppose that I think that someone might disagree with my premises or interpretations and yet still agree with my conclusions, or that I think everyone already agrees with my premises and interpretations?

[Rob Bowman]

Storm Rider,

You wrote:

In my reading of the ECF it is more than evident that they were far more comfortable with the thought and language of man becoming gods. The mere thought of such today catches more Christians in the throat and they are loath to state it so plainly.

The reason for this difference is simple: the church fathers were using the language of their Hellenistic culture when they spoke of deification, and Western Christians today generally find such language tends to be misunderstood in ways it would not have been in the patristic context.

You wrote:

As far as the doctrine of the Trinity goes, at no point during the time of Christ ministry on earth was this doctrine presented as a required belief of the early disciples. In fact, is was virtually a non-existent focus of his teachings.

Naturally, since the teaching was one that would be developed based on the progressive revelation of the divine Being that was still under way during Jesus' earthly ministry and would take a giant leap forward in the events of Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension and of the Holy Spirit's descent at Pentecost. These events created the conditions in which the first-century apostles and their associates began to understand the distinct persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, of which Jesus had spoken just before his death (John 14-16) and somewhat after his resurrection (e.g., Matt. 28:19). The last-cited text shows that belief in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was expected of all baptized disciples in the early church. It took time, of course, for the theological significance of that belief to be worked out.

[wenglund]

The post mentioned above explains why I don't agree that social Trinitarianism opens the door to deification in the LDS sense. There is just as wide of a gulf between the patristic and LDS doctrines of deification as there is between social Trinitarianism and LDS theology.

This presupposes that each side of the two sets are, respectively, monolithic in their beliefs. From what I can tell, the ECF differed in their perception of deification just as we LDS do and just as various Christian sects do, including Evangelicals. There is also a diversity of beliefs among social trinitarians, including, but not limited to LDS. Not all Evangelicals consider themselves social trinitarians.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Loran Blood]

This is an area where I've changed my thinking quite dramatically over time. I used to condemn Trinitarians to a kind of damnation of illogic, thinking that they were spouting nonsense. If the Father was God and the Son was God, how could the Father not be the Son? A=B; B=C; then doesn't A=C? In this sort of familiar propositional logic, it follows naturally from the Father and the Son each being God that the Father and the Son are identical.

In some sense this has to be the case, as, from a logical/conceptual view, the idea of homoousia requres the absulute identity of substance, not between, but within the Trinity itself. We cannot forget that the Trinity is a single, unified entity; it is ontologically a single, undifferentiated identity (the term "substance" as used in the traditional formulation is not "substance as we understand that term, but a neo-Platonic metaphysical construct denoting a kind of spiritual "stuff" that coheres together in some way, but allows no definition beyond this). The "persons" of the Trinity therefore must be as much homoosia as the unitery entity itself, which is where the trouble really lies.

However, a friend who had taken in depth courses in philosophical logic made me aware that, seen through the lens of modal logic (which should not be confused in this discussion with "modalism/Sabellianism"), the Father could be God and the Son could be God in distinct ways--a "Fatherly; way and a "Sonly"; way, so to speak. Given this, so far as I presently understand it, I'm not at all sure it's illogical for Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to each be God without all being the same, identical person. In fact, I think it is a logical thought, though admittedly a strange one.

However, the Niacine Creed (and other allied forumlations) is not dealing in modal logic (a human intellectual construct in formal logic that does not at all necessarily tell us anything about the real universe), nor in logic in the broader sense, but in the explication of a metaphysical doctrine grounded in ontological speculations dealing with the fundamental nature of God. The restored gospel, indeed, tells us that all the gods of the grand presidency of Heaven are, indeed "one" God in the sense that each, either through something in their core nature, or through divine investature of authority, acts in a "fatherly" or "sonly" way, depending upon cirucumstances, and that each shares perfectly the mind and will of the other. However, the key idea missing here is still homoosia, which is, I am claiming, utterly foreign to the restored gospel as much as it is utterly foreign to 1st Century Christianity, and introduces logical and conceptual problems that traditional Christian apologetics of the Rob Bowman variety are unable to grapple with in any philosohically convincing way (but which the Restoration deals with nicely and essentially closes the case on, at least as to basic concepts).

The Christians of the early centuries who came up with the formal doctrine of the Trinity were trying to solve a scriptural puzzle that I think we sometimes take too lightly. How can the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost all be divine when the scriptures affirm emphatically that there is only one God? This is surely a problem that deserves considerable wrestling.

Indeed, the question must be asked and the horns of any dilemma grasped, but I'm not at all sure, and our very understanding of the Great Apostasy implies explicitly, that the way in which to grasp those problems was through academic philosophcal speculation. This is where the entire post-apostolic intellectualization of the doctrines of the Church and the fundamental project of the later (middle to late 2nd Century) early fathers and Nicene and post-Nicene fathers - to harmonize Hellenistic philosophy with the scriptures - went "to the dogs" and created (among other pressues) the major impetus for the near total loss of doctrinal understanding and the complete loss of priesthood authority. The NT itself is, I think, far clearer on this point than you are allowing, as the separate, distince identity of each of the members of the Godhead in the NT is well represented in a number of areas, and coheres well with the general anthropomorphic representation of God in the OT.

Now, regarding the OP question, I obviously can't answer for Rob, particularly since I'm LDS rather than Protestant, but I can offer an important difference between modalism and Trinitarianism. By positing that there are multiple "persons" (consciousnesses and wills) within God, Trinitarianism makes God inherently social, a fact whose implications are particularly developed by "social Trinitarian" theologians like Cornelius Plantinga. (FWIW, Blake Ostler argues that Mormons are social Trinitarians, and some on this board, like Dr. Peterson, have commented favorably on this interpretation.)

The model of God as inherently individual but taking on different roles at different times (modalism) differs greatly from the model of God as inherently social, an internal community, and may have very different implications. It's much easier, for instance, to explain why an inherently social God would be a loving, moral being, and would want to create other beings and have relationship with them than it is to explain why a God who is inherently individual (and therefore non-social) would want to do so.

A few comments:

1. I see little reason why either the Trinitarian or modal perspective would make God, as understood within each, inherently social or non-social. Again, since the doctrine of the Trinity doesn't tell us what the Trinity actually is, and hence, what God actually is, any extrapolation from its major claims to claims of "inherent" chacteristics is probematic. The only way Christians can understand God to be social, (or loving, or all-wise etc.) is that the NT says that God exhibits these charcteristics. They cannot be extracted by logical extension from the idea of the Trinity itself, or inferred from it, because the idea of the Trinity does not contain those attributes. The multiple persons within God need not be inherently social. We do not know, from the Trinitarian concept alone, what they "need" to be or "must be" God is, for the traditional Christian, "wholly other" it is something beyond and transcending all catagories of time, space, matter, energy, and yes, logic. What Christians believe God to be like (not what they believe him to be as only the restored gospel answers that question) does not flow from the metaphysical clams of the Trinitarian doctrine, but from the NT. In the same way, the modal God need have no limiations as to sociability. God, as understood in the restored gospel, is a presideing godhead composed of three, distinct, embodied, individual personages, and yet they are still understood to be "one" and to be undivided socially. There is no logical necessity either way.

It's much easier, for instance, to explain why an inherently social God would be a loving, moral being, and would want to create other beings and have relationship with them than it is to explain why a God who is inherently individual (and therefore non-social) would want to do so

I see no reason to believe that a perfect, exalted being who's individual attributes (including love, socialbility, and moral knowedge) have been raised to an ultimate state cannot be, at the same time, both a distinct individual and ultimately motivated by a desire to share and extend his own perfection to others.

I am personally struck by the difference it makes for God to be inherently social. To me, modalism and Trinitarianism, understood to be about the relationship of three persons, are worlds apart. And Trinitarianism is, in my judgment, far superior to modalism in its implications--it makes God more sociable, approachable, and comprehensible; accounts better for God's moral nature and creation of us; and seems more compatible with a doctrine of deification, in which divinity is something that can be shared, rather than simply the attribute of a single individual entity.

As the restored gospel dispenses with this entire argument in its entirety through direct revelation, the point for Mormons would apper pretty much moot. My engagement of it here is for the sake of attempting to demonstrate, vis-a-vis Rob's perspective, that the Trinitarian/modal conflict is strictly a matter of the fine points of early Mediaval Christian dogma that, both being utterly irrelevant to what the Apostles and early Christians (not to mention ancient Israelites) actually believed, appear as what they are: interesting and tortorous philosphical problems that, for all their internal complexity and what can be made of that intellectually, are, in the end, intellectual sound and fury signifying only the intellectual currents of the school of Alexandria from which these ideas were primarily derived. If Jesus is a "mode" or if he is a "person" within a larger, unitary "mode" (could not the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost be thought of as "persons" within a "mode"where mode is understood as "the particular appearance, form, or manner in which an underlying substance, or a permanent aspect or attribute of it, is manifested"? We could combine the two views into "Trinitarian Modalism" It would seem this would be as philosopohcally viable as either the Trinitarian or modal views by themselves) his fundamental attributes and character, as stated in the NT, would still be the same by assertion.

In fact, the reason Athanasius (of Athanasion Creed fame) insisted so strongly on a Trinity, as opposed to Arius' doctrine of Christ as the first creation of the Father (the one divine person) was precisely because Athanasius was so set on deification: Christ's divinity provided an Incarnation, and incarnation meant there was a point of contact between God and man (since Christ was both God and man).

Yes, but both were arguing from an Alexandrian/Hellenic/neo-Platonic perspective, not from a gospel perspective, the core concepts of which had, for the most part, already been lost to thier conscisousness and intellectual sensibilities. We these two not arguing past each other, to a great extent? Arius was correct, in a way, in that, although the Father did not create the Son, in the way he would have meant, Jesus Christ is, indeed, the First Born or First Begotton of the Father, and hence, had a beginning as an organized being. Arius' idea does not necessarily imply that Christ was not divine (indeed, Arius thought Christ the highest and most powerful of all created beings in Heaven), but only that he was in some sense subordinate to the Father. The restored gospel teaches that Christ is both equal to the Father (as to power, glory, knowlede etc.) as well as being subordinate in priesthood lineage (Jesus ascended to "his" God, as well as ours, and does all he does under the direction of the Father). Arius and Athanasius were arguing past each other in a philosophcal haze ( 1 Nephi 8:23) created by the "sophistires of men" as present in their time.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Loran Blood

[wenglund]

Wade,

You wrote:

If this is so with anyone's arguments, why do you feel the need to make this point incessantly regarding my arguments? Do you suppose that I think that someone might disagree with my premises or interpretations and yet still agree with my conclusions, or that I think everyone already agrees with my premises and interpretations?

I mention it because of your seeming penchant for dogmatism. Experience has taught me that discussions with you often break down because you tend not to grant as reasonable differing points of view. This is compounded to the extent that your interlocutors differ, point by point, with your views. I mentioned the above in hopes that at some point you might change so that discussions with you might become productive.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Storm Rider]

Storm Rider,

You wrote:

The reason for this difference is simple: the church fathers were using the language of their Hellenistic culture when they spoke of deification, and Western Christians today generally find such language tends to be misunderstood in ways it would not have been in the patristic context.

You wrote:

Naturally, since the teaching was one that would be developed based on the progressive revelation of the divine Being that was still under way during Jesus' earthly ministry and would take a giant leap forward in the events of Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension and of the Holy Spirit's descent at Pentecost. These events created the conditions in which the first-century apostles and their associates began to understand the distinct persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, of which Jesus had spoken just before his death (John 14-16) and somewhat after his resurrection (e.g., Matt. 28:19). The last-cited text shows that belief in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was expected of all baptized disciples in the early church. It took time, of course, for the theological significance of that belief to be worked out.

No, it is not natural. We are talking about Jesus Christ. He did not choose to make this an issue of his ministry. He was the creator of the gospel; he was the one who emphsized certain teachings. It was men several hundered years after the resurrection of Jesus to change the focus of church to the doctrine of the Trinity, rather than faith, repentance, baptism and the Second Comforter.

Understanding the roles of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was something that men chose to emphasis to the point of creating doctrine to explain. Then demand that all believe that single doctrine in order to belong to the then most populous church/set of beliefs.

As far as patristic understanding in regards to the topic of being gods, the majority of Christians still choke on the words; in fact, they do almost anything to backtrack, to paraphrase, to denigrate, to deemphasize that men might become gods. Yet, that was the teaching by the most significant of the ECF. I am only addressing the language here.

[Loran Blood]

The issue of whether Book of Mormon Christology is modalistic is also one where my thinking has evolved. I was long convinced that the modalistic reading was the reading. I now think the matter is much more complex.

So long as the original author of the BofM texts in question understood and believed "God" to be, for all intents and purposes, what Joseph Smith taught him to be, the question of Trinitarian/modalist readings of the BofM become rather moot, no?

It is preciesly because Rob is attempting to import readings from evengelical Christian doctrine into the BofM, the purpose of which is to show that the theology of Joseph Smith began in a more traditional Christian vein and "evolved" away from that to the normative contemporary LDS understandings, that this argument is ongoing.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Loran Blood

[Loran Blood]

I think one would be hard pressed to find scriptural support for the idea that we become divine on the same scale and in the same inherent sense as the members of the Godhead, who are represented as having been divine since before the Creation.

Except that its essentally been taught and understood as doctrine since the Church's inception. Beyond that, while the members of the Godhead were divine since before "the creation," they are not represented by the clear implications of LDS doctrine as having always been divine, which is another matter entirely (note: I am utterly and inexorably opposed to Ostler's ideas here). This is most obviously the case with Jesus Christ, who, although divine before his mortal mission, was also the first born of the Father, and hence, had an absolute beginning as an organized intelligence, just as all of us (and, given Joseph's clear teachings, the Father himself had at some distant time) had and from the same source and in the same manner. This means also that his attributes, properties, and qualities as an indivudual being had a clear developmental beginning. Indeed, the entire idea of diefication in the gospel is grounded in the developmental nature of all divinity and the continuaity bewteen God and his children in the attainment of such divinity through a process of maturation and experience. There is no implication in established LDS doctrine, and substantial scriptural/doctrinal support for the idea that diefication, as applied to the presonal attributes and capacities of God's children, is total, unlimited, and all encompassing, its only limitation being that, like Christ himself, we will always be subordinate to our Father in Heaven as the source and ground of our salvation and exaltation, and do all we do under his direction and authority in the sense of priesthood lineage and hierarchy. As to personal attributes and chacteristics, however (omnipotence, omniscience, love, wisdom, glory, perfection etc.) we will be absolutely equal to the Father and Jesus Christ (we will be "perfect: and have, as modern revelation makes clear, a "fulness" of perfection in our indivudual charcteristics and capacities).

(Christ didn't come to earth in order to be deified, as we did; rather he emptied himself of his pre-existent divinity in order to become human, to lift us Godward [Phillippians 2:5-7]).

I don't think this isn't fully correct. While Jesus was divine before he came to earth, so apparantly, were a number of other prexistent sons and daughters of God, who, however, had other missions to fulfill and had not arrived at nearly the level of development as had the Savior. Secondly, Jesus only recieved a fullness ("All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth") only after his death and ressurection. Jesus underwent a path of development from lower to higher stages, both in mortality and as an "intelligence" created before the foundation of the world that advanced, degree by degree, to become the chosen Messiah to the rest of God's children.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Loran Blood

[Loran Blood]

The post mentioned above explains why I don't agree that social Trinitarianism opens the door to deification in the LDS sense.

Indeed, "social Trinitarianism," or any other kind, has nothing to do with the reasons why LDS understand diefication to be within reach. For LDS, becoming like God (becoming a god/goddess individually by having our essential individual qualities and attribues purified, refined, and raised to the level at which God experiences his own inherent qualities) is the ultimate end of the process of the natural maturing and development of the human soul, and is a matter of the innate, essential capacities and fundamental nature of God's children as literal offspring.

In other words, unless sin intervenes effectively, when a Latter day Saint asks the question of him/herself, "what do I want to be when I "grow up?" one can then point to Jesus Christ. That is the fully mature, fully refined and perfected form of the child of God at the full consummation of the developmental path from prexistent entity, to an organized "intelligence" with physical form and personality, to mortal probation, to ressurected, glorified god. A god is the fully mature form of a literal child of God, and the inevitable end of that process of growth and maturity so long as sin does not "short circuit" the process and allow us to realize a lesser degree of maturity and potential. The potential, however, as literal sons and daughters of God, is absolutely innate, inherent, and essential to our nature.

In LDS theology, we are already like God in an inherent, underlying sense, by definition as his literal children from the very beginning of our existence as organized personalities. The only question that then remains is the level of development at which our inherent likeness to him will ultimately be expressed (and for which the mortal probationary experience, to one degree or another, is essential).

Edited February 17, 2012 by Loran Blood

[DonBradley]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for engaging me in this discussion.

I believe you've misunderstood what I wrote above about Athanasius. I was pointing out to others that Christ's divinity (and therefore the Trinity) were so important to Athanasius because of the importance deification/theosis/our becoming "partakers of the divine nature" had for him. I nowhere stated or implied that Athanasius was a proto-Mormon or believed outside of traditional Christian orthodoxy about God's nature or the degree to which we can become like Him.

I also explicitly disclaimed belief, myself, that we become gods in the same sense that God is God. That said, I believe--as expressed above--that Christianity has traditionally taken such a low and dim view of the material and the human (despite the positive implications of Christ's incarnation and resurrection) that it has taken us to be much weaker carriers for the divine nature than we really are. Christ has made it possible for us to become divine, not, on my view, in some absolute sense, as if I <laugh> or you were to be the center of all things or worthy of worship, but nevertheless in a very strong sense. We were made in the image of the Creator to be creators ourselves.

Don

[mfbukowski]

Back in 2010 on this forum I presented five differences between LDS theology and social Trinitarianism. I think the argument I presented then holds up pretty well.

That of course is highly debatable, but I will mostly sit this one out I think. I think your major flaw, as always, is misunderstanding what we really believe as opposed to what you tell us we believe.

If you could only understand that, we could get somewhere. But you don't, and at least in my opinion, we can't.

[DonBradley]

Loran,

Since you asked about the different implications of modalism and Trinitarianism, I offered my view: Trinitarianism makes God inherently social. You question this, but I didn't fully understand your objection to it. I have no idea what you're saying about the Trinity being a "mode," since the "modes" in modalism are functions or roles.

For one person to have multiple roles isn't social. Loran the citizen, Loran the saint, and Loran the message-board poster don't, in any non-trivial sense, constitute a community. They can't socially interact. They are all aspects of a given person.

But three persons, in the philosophical sense--centers of consciousness with their own wills, can socially interact and constitute a community.

It's true that understandings of the Trinity that posit the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost possess a single faculty of will would obliterate any real meaningful distinction of persons, and thus collapse the Trinity into something like modalism. But, to be fair, not all (if even most) traditional Christians hold that understanding. So, it's not clear why their understanding of the Godhead would not be genuinely social.

BTW, I'm curious, do you have references from scripture and Joseph Smith that Christ had an absolute beginning? I'm not familiar with any.

Also, you offered your judgment that Christ did not receive a fullness of glory until after the resurrection. But he thought he was returning to "the glory I had with [the Father] before the world was" (John 17:5), in order to bring his disciples into that glory also (John 17:19-24). While Christ, in ascending to divine glory, established a pattern for us, he first descended from divine glory. Thus Christ did not become mortal in order to acquire divinity; he left his divinity in order to bring us up to it.

Paul's teaching in Philippians 1 is the same: Jesus, in ascending to the place of power at the Father's right hand, as Lord over all things, was returning to the place he had previously occupied as the pre-existent Creator of all things, only now with a resurrected body. Since Jesus was already pre-existently divine in this passage, he clearly did not empty himself of his divinity and become an embodied human so he could become divine, but, rather, so he could become divine as a human being, and thus open that door for us.

Don

Edited February 17, 2012 by DonBradley

[Rob Bowman]

Don,

Thanks for the corrections/clarifications. With regard to divinization or deification, of course definition (that's a lot of "d...tion" words!) is everything. The same is true for other theological buzz words. Evangelicals and Mormons typically mean something very different by such terms as "spirit" and "salvation," yet there is enough overlap to make sorting out the issues difficult for many if not most of us. Evangelicals generally don't describe their view of the consummation as "deification," but we do have a robust doctrine of glorification that affirms that we will be immortal, perfect human beings, with supernatural life and power, enjoying unfettered access and fellowship with the Father, being conformed to the image of God's divine Son Jesus Christ, and so forth.

[wenglund]

Also, you offered your judgment that Christ did not receive a fullness of glory until after the resurrection. But he thought he was returning to "the glory I had with [the Father] before the world was" (John 17:5), in order to bring his disciples into that glory also (John 17:19-24). While Christ, in ascending to divine glory, established a pattern for us, he first descended from divine glory. Thus Christ did not become mortal in order to acquire divinity; he left his divinity in order to bring us up to it.

I could be wrong, but what I think Loran had in mind is that the Son wasn't "perfected" in glory and divinity until after he was resurrected and thereby became even as the Father. In Luke 13:32. Christ said: "Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected." (emphasis mine) In light of this, I don't think it coincidental that following his resurrection, when Christ visited his "other sheep," he rightly revised the saying in Matthew 5:48 to include himself, by saying: "Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect. (3 Nephi 12:48--emphasis mine)

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[DonBradley]

Hi Wade,

I guess the question would be what is meant by "perfected" here. It would be interesting to look at the Greek (which as I understand it means "complete").

In any case, I'm not aware of scriptures teaching that Jesus came here for his salvation rather than ours.

I think such theological issues are important. But I wonder if sometimes I overemphasize their importance. I've experienced God's Spirit, blessings, and grace at various times, when I held various doctrinal understandings about Him. He hasn't cast me aside because I've misunderstood, either in one direction or another. And surely most of my current understandings are sufficiently incomplete, if not just misdirected, as to be technically wrong (or worse).

Above all precise theologizing, we should be certain we love, honor, and worship God, and Him only, in our lives, to trust in His boundless goodness and mercy, to live as truly as we can to the relationship He offers us, and to seek to be like Him.

I am capable of getting so stuck in intellectual matters that relate to these things that I give priority to spinning my wheels on those, instead of spending more time in prayer, in feasting from scripture, and in trying to live out as much I can to others God's mercy to me and accomplish His purposes so far as I understand them.

The truth is that when it comes to such deep and ultimate things as the exact nature of God and how the Godhead is one, I am way out of my freaking depth! Still, I have to believe something about all this--hopefully with a humility that reflects the true depths of my ignorance. Fundamentally, I believe that God is good--really and truly good: the best we can imagine and so, so much more. I believe that God is transcendent. And I have to believe that what the scriptures so pound on--that God is one--is true in some very strong, and not merely a trivial, sense. Perhaps my understanding of how this is so is mostly off. But at this point in my life I can't help believing that there is unity behind all the plurality. I also have to have some belief about how we are related to God, and how much we are capable of becoming like Him. My present solution to this is to believe that we are less capable of being what God is than, say, Bruce R. McConkie thought, but more capable of this than traditional Christians have thought. I see so much reason to be optimistic about humankind--and it seems, given Christ's invitation that we join him in glory, that God shares my optimism. Or, rather, than I am just sharing His.

I've thought of God in different ways over time, and these do affect, somewhat, how I relate to Him. When I think of God as...close to us, even somehow related, rather than wholly Other, it makes a big difference. If God is wholly Other, it's easy to feel a heightened awe, but it's more an awe of bafflement than of anything else. But if human beings and God are more akin than traditional theology wants to admit, then not only are we more fit to partake of His nature, but it is also so much easier to feel connected to God, loved by and loving of Him, and to relate to Him intimately in prayer. If the gulf between humankind and God is bridgeable--and Christ shows that it is--then God is obviously not "wholly Other," and the Father is more akin to us than traditional Christians have imagined Him to be.

So, doctrinally, I want to chart a path that doesn't reject one value for another. I want to perceive God's reality in a way that neither slights human potential nor diminishes God's holiness and power, that neither distances God from our approach to Him in loving prayer as a Father nor tries to bring Him close only by dragging Him down to where we are.

Undoubtedly my precise understandings are all in error. But hopefully I am erring in the right ballpark, and my foul balls are flying closer and closer to fair. Or that, at least, is my prayer.

In any case, I should probably start reducing my participation in these interesting discussions and reinvesting more of this time and effort from here into actualizing the faith I do have.

Don

[Loran Blood]

Loran,

Since you asked about the different implications of modalism and Trinitarianism, I offered my view: Trinitarianism makes God inherently social. You question this, but I didn't fully understand your objection to it.

Because I see no reason why the Trinity (whatever this entity actually is) must necessarily be social. As with the modal/Trinitarian problem, since we don't know, and traditional Trinitarian doctrine cannot tell us what God is, the only way we can surmise that he is social is because the NT tells us he is. But that is an explication of a view of God, not an extrapolation from the doctrine of the Trinity. The "persons" of the Trinity are metaphysical categories and concepts, and the "Trinity" itself a metaphysical abstraction, and as such, I don't see how you can ascribe a normative concept like "social" to it without either having first been told that "it" is, indeed, social, or having some basis within the doctrine of the Trinity itself for such a determination. I see no such basis in the idea of the Trinity itself, as the term "persons" here is used only in a symbolic sense.

I have no idea what you're saying about the Trinity being a "mode," since the "modes" in modalism are functions or roles.

But as I defined the term when I used it, a mode is also "the particular appearance, form, or manner in which an underlying substance, or a permanent aspect or attribute of it, is manifested." In the way the doctrine of the Trinity defies the law of identity and turns in on itself logically, is it not the case that, as Jesus or the Holy Ghost can be thought of as "modes" of the one underlying substance, the one underlying substance, being of the same substance as the "persons" of the Trinity, must be in some sense a mode, or the core, underlying mode of the various persons? As the two, both the unitary essence and the "persons" are metaphysically identical, even a clear understanding of which is the manifestation of the other (is the Trinity a function of the "persons," or the "persons" a function of the Trinity, and how could we know?) is conceptually difficult. A hairsplitting point perhaps, but hardly at variance with much of the aguementation that produced the doctrine of the Trinity in the first place.

For one person to have multiple roles isn't social. Loran the citizen, Loran the saint, and Loran the message-board poster don't, in any non-trivial sense, constitute a community. They can't socially interact. They are all aspects of a given person.

But Loran the citizen, Loran the saint, and Loran the messege-board poster is in no sense analogous to what the doctrine of the Trinity is saying about the nature of God, and the the differences between my roles as a phenomenologically and mathematically single person, and the "persons" of the Trinity as manifestations of a single homoosia is hardly in the same conceptual universe. God is wholly "other," and need not be anything like ourselves. It is only that the doctrine of the Trinity was a philosophical afterthought imported into the already existing concept of God as a personal, social being, that such a position can be taken.

But three persons, in the philosophical sense--centers of consciousness with their own wills, can socially interact and constitute a community.

A "community" of a single unitary homoosia? What are you actually trying to describe?

It's true that understandings of the Trinity that posit the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost possess a single faculty of will would obliterate any real meaningful distinction of persons, and thus collapse the Trinity into something like modalism.

How could the idea that God is a single, undivided, unitary metaphysical substance be collapsed any further? God, in the Trinitarian view, is precisely a singularity. But "it" is also three "persons," or personalized aspects. It cannot, it would seem, be collapsed any further, not can it be divided, as it is, metaphysically, "one God." And yet the doctrine of the Trinity claims that it is, at one and the same time, both absolutely one and absolutely three without paradox. or contradiction.

BTW, I'm curious, do you have references from scripture and Joseph Smith that Christ had an absolute beginning? I'm not familiar with any.

I did not say that "Christ had an absolute beginning." What I said regarding Jesus Christ was that he "although divine before his mortal mission, was also the first born of the Father, and hence, had an absolute beginning as an organized intelligence, just as all of us (and, given Joseph's clear teachings, the Father himself had at some distant time) had and from the same source and in the same manner." Jesus Christ has always existed as an intelligent entity in some form, just as we have always existed, and had no beginning and no ultimate "creation." All of this is rather fundamental church doctrine, and well established in basic outline.

Also, you offered your judgment that Christ did not receive a fullness of glory until after the resurrection. But he thought he was returning to "the glory I had with [the Father] before the world was" (John 17:5), in order to bring his disciples into that glory also (John 17:19-24). While Christ, in ascending to divine glory, established a pattern for us, he first descended from divine glory. Thus Christ did not become mortal in order to acquire divinity; he left his divinity in order to bring us up to it.

He did not descend to acquire divinity, and I never claimed that he did, nor is it my judgment that he did not acquire ultimate perfection until after his resurrection, but basic church doctrine. Established LDS doctrine is clear (as is Paul himself) that Jesus, although a god before coming to earth, did not have precisely the same perfections and attributes as the Father, and did not receive such until after his death and resurrection. He was returning to his initial glory, but not precisely, as his initial glory was not complete and in a state of fullness before that time. There are numerous GA quotations I could transcribe here, but Paul's clear teaching regarding Jesus development toward ultimate perfection is the standard and has been supported and clarified by the Lord's servans innumerable times. In any case, here's a direct quote from the Church published Life and Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles Institute student manuel:

Christ always was perfect in that he obeyed the whole law of the Father at all times and was everlastingly the Sinless One. See Heb. 4:14–16 ; 5:1–3 . But on the other hand he was made perfect, through the sufferings and experiences of mortality, in the sense that he thereby died and was resurrected in glorious immortality. In that perfected state, possessing at long last a body of flesh and bones, he then had the same eternal perfection possessed by his Father. Hence his pronouncement, after the resurrection, that all power was given him in heaven and in earth. (Matt 28:18.)” (McConkie, DNTC, 3:158.)

The scriptural quote is worth a look:

Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;

And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;

Jesus rose to perfection alone a developmental path, first during his preexistent state, and later during his mortal ministry, the end of which was a reception of a complete fullness of godhood and exalted perfection. He then tells us to "come, follow me," and to do what he has done, which is that which his Father has done.

Just core LDS doctrine, but profound beyond expression.

Paul's teaching in Philippians 1 is the same: Jesus, in ascending to the place of power at the Father's right hand, as Lord over all things, was returning to the place he had previously occupied as the pre-existent Creator of all things, only now with a resurrected body. Since Jesus was already pre-existently divine in this passage, he clearly did not empty himself of his divinity and become an embodied human so he could become divine, but, rather, so he could become divine as a human being, and thus open that door for us.

The problem is not that he wasn't divine, but that he did not attain all power in Heaven and earth until the completion of his mortal mission and his resurrection. It was only then that an ultimate state of perfection and godhood were acquired in their fullness.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Loran Blood

[Loran Blood]

I could be wrong, but what I think Loran had in mind is that the Son wasn't "perfected" in glory and divinity until after he was resurrected and thereby became even as the Father. In Luke 13:32. Christ said: "Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected." (emphasis mine) In light of this, I don't think it coincidental that following his resurrection, when Christ visited his "other sheep," he rightly revised the saying in Matthew 5:48 to include himself, by saying: "Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect. (3 Nephi 12:48--emphasis mine)

Thats about it. As Paul points out (and countless - i'm not going to do any dredging up right at the moment - General Authorities in contemporary times), Christ was made perfect through his obedience to the gospel and to his Father. This has no relation to his prior preexistent divinity, but to his final perfection as a god that was only experienced following the completion of his mortal ministry and resurrection. There were apparently other sons and daughters of the Father who had reached divine or god-like status in the preexistence, but who were still below Jesus in such attributes, and all of them - including Jeus - were required to become aquainted with mortal element as a bridge between any achieved godhood in the preexistence and an eternal fullness of such godhood, or, that is, exaltation.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Loran Blood

[DonBradley]

Loran,

Thanks for continuing to engage me on this. As I stated in another post above, I don't claim to have the answers set in stone.

You seem more confident in your own views, like you feel that, on these subjects at least, you do have answers in stone and even that these constitute, as you've termed it a few times, "the established doctrine of the church."

As I understand it the church has an established standard for determining what constitutes doctrine: things has presented as doctrine in official First Presidency statements. If you want to adduce quotations from General Authorities in favor of your views, that's great--these are good to see and show what some church leaders have understood, and perhaps even what has been taught in some things published by the church. But if you're going to use the force of "established church doctrine" for an idea, then please evidence that it such in the way appropriate to such a claim--with the First Presidency statements that established it. That will help me see to see that these views do carry the force of established church doctrine.

Because I see no reason why the Trinity (whatever this entity actually is) must necessarily be social. As with the modal/Trinitarian problem, since we don't know, and traditional Trinitarian doctrine cannot tell us what God is, the only way we can surmise that he is social is because the NT tells us he is. But that is an explication of a view of God, not an extrapolation from the doctrine of the Trinity. The "persons" of the Trinity are metaphysical categories and concepts, and the "Trinity" itself a metaphysical abstraction, and as such, I don't see how you can ascribe a normative concept like "social" to it without either having first been told that "it" is, indeed, social, or having some basis within the doctrine of the Trinity itself for such a determination. I see no such basis in the idea of the Trinity itself, as the term "persons" here is used only in a symbolic sense.

I have to disagree that the persons posited in Trinitarian theology are "symbolic" or "metaphysical abstractions." While the term "person" here doesn't mean "human being," as we commonly use the term, it is used in the same sense as the term "personal" is used when people refer to a "personal God."

BTW, of course Trinitarians don't believe in a social God if others allowed to define for them what they mean and say it isn't social. But unless we allow others this privilege, of defining things for them rather than using their own definitions, I see no reason to not take those who refer to a personal Father, a personal Son, and a personal Holy Ghost interacting in the Trinity as referring to just what they say it is: a social interaction.

But as I defined the term when I used it, a mode is also "the particular appearance, form, or manner in which an underlying substance, or a permanent aspect or attribute of it, is manifested." In the way the doctrine of the Trinity defies the law of identity and turns in on itself logically, is it not the case that, as Jesus or the Holy Ghost can be thought of as "modes" of the one underlying substance, the one underlying substance, being of the same substance as the "persons" of the Trinity, must be in some sense a mode, or the core, underlying mode of the various persons? As the two, both the unitary essence and the "persons" are metaphysically identical, even a clear understanding of which is the manifestation of the other (is the Trinity a function of the "persons," or the "persons" a function of the Trinity, and how could we know?) is conceptually difficult. A hairsplitting point perhaps, but hardly at variance with much of the aguementation that produced the doctrine of the Trinity in the first place.

You raised the idea here that you are splitting hairs here, and I agree. From the OP I thought you were objecting to metaphysical hairsplitting by traditional Christians; yet here you seem to engage in the same sort of thing in opposing their views. I dislike hairsplitting in either direction and really have nothing to say on these points.

But Loran the citizen, Loran the saint, and Loran the messege-board poster is in no sense analogous to what the doctrine of the Trinity is saying about the nature of God, and the the differences between my roles as a phenomenologically and mathematically single person, and the "persons" of the Trinity as manifestations of a single homoosia is hardly in the same conceptual universe.

BINGO, Loran! You nailed the distinction! But while Loran acting in the distinct roles, or modes, of citizen, saint, and message-board poster is "hardly in the same conceptual universe" with Trinitarianism it is analogous to modalism, in which God acts in the roles or modes of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. So, although your OP questions the distinction between persons and roles in Trinity vs. modalism discussions, your statement above affirms that distinction with a vengeance.

God is wholly "other," and need not be anything like ourselves. It is only that the doctrine of the Trinity was a philosophical afterthought imported into the already existing concept of God as a personal, social being, that such a position can be taken.

The idea of God as a "Trinity" emerges in the second century and is not originally couched in the Greek metaphysical terminology of the later creeds. So, following the principle of charity (as well as what I see as straightforward logic), the idea of a "Trinity" should not be equated with the particular creeds that tried to systematize in such terminology.

How could the idea that God is a single, undivided, unitary metaphysical substance be collapsed any further?

You're right--that idea, in itself, can't be collapsed further. But when it is coupled with the distinct concept of three persons, each in his way mapping onto that essence, the three persons presents a conceptual distinction that could be further collapsed, say into one person.

God, in the Trinitarian view, is precisely a singularity. But "it" is also three "persons," or personalized aspects. It cannot, it would seem, be collapsed any further, not can it be divided, as it is, metaphysically, "one God." And yet the doctrine of the Trinity claims that it is, at one and the same time, both absolutely one and absolutely three without paradox. or contradiction.

I'm not convinced it is a contradiction. You've rejected the idea that the Trinity could be understood through modal logic, but not in any specific, or to me persuasive, way. Mathematics is also a human construct in the sense that modal logic is. Indeed, formal logic itself is such a construct--no one developed it till the Greeks. We used such human constructs to understand reality all the time; and you've presented no argument for the invalidity of modal logic. Could you elaborate on how modal logic--the logic of qualified statements--is not valid? My judgment that Trinitarian doctrine is not logically self-contradictory is largely based on the idea that it works in modal logic. So if you can persuade me that modal logic is an invalid form of logic, and I mean this--I may change my judgment. (Note also that another poster believes we can frame the Trinity logically in set theory, something I'm not familiar with but willing to look into.)

I did not say that "Christ had an absolute beginning." What I said regarding Jesus Christ was that he "although divine before his mortal mission, was also the first born of the Father, and hence, had an absolute beginning as an organized intelligence, just as all of us (and, given Joseph's clear teachings, the Father himself had at some distant time) had and from the same source and in the same manner."

Since the term "organized intelligence" is yours and not one I'm familiar with from my life in the church, I read it based on the surrounding context you provided, and therefore interpreted it to mean that Jesus' spirit was formed from some sort of intelligent particles (spirit matter) at the time of his spirit birth.

As such, Jesus would indeed have an absolute beginning--unless by "Jesus" we mean something like "the scattered particles that would someday comprise Jesus' spirit body" rather than Jesus the person/Lord.

Have I got your meaning right--that self-existent intelligent particles were formed into individual we know as Jesus, or do you mean that Jesus was originally a personal, individual intelligence who was born into a spirit body? If the latter, then I concede the point: you do believe Jesus had no absolute beginning; you just don't believe he was always divine. But if the former, then, by any understanding of the term "Jesus" that I would find meaningful, you believe he had an absolute beginning-- that is, an absolute beginning as Jesus.

He did not descend to acquire divinity, and I never claimed that he did, nor is it my judgment that he did not acquire ultimate perfection until after his resurrection, but basic church doctrine. Established LDS doctrine is clear (as is Paul himself) that Jesus, although a god before coming to earth, did not have precisely the same perfections and attributes as the Father, and did not receive such until after his death and resurrection. He was returning to his initial glory, but not precisely, as his initial glory was not complete and in a state of fullness before that time. There are numerous GA quotations I could transcribe here, but Paul's clear teaching regarding Jesus development toward ultimate perfection is the standard and has been supported and clarified by the Lord's servans innumerable times.

You are right that there are passages, like Hebrews 5:9, which you quote, that speak of Jesus being perfected, which in the Greek (I checked) means "completed." This does, as you say, appear to have to do with his resurrection. Thus Jesus was not a perfect divine man until he went through resurrection.

The important points to me are 1) that Jesus was preexistently divine; so Jesus being divine and becoming a divine man are distinct, and 2) nowhere do the scriptures indicate that Jesus needed such completion for his salvation, but rather so that he could save others--becoming, as the Hebrews passage says, our High Priest and the author of our salvation.

Thank you for the scriptural quote. I had not remembered it when I wrote my post.

Jesus rose to perfection alone a developmental path, first during his preexistent state, and later during his mortal ministry, the end of which was a reception of a complete fullness of godhood and exalted perfection. He then tells us to "come, follow me," and to do what he has done, which is that which his Father has done.

Just core LDS doctrine, but profound beyond expression.

I won't argue with the idea that Jesus became a perfect, deified man through the resurrection, but only point out what you agree with--that Jesus was already divine before he came. That he marked the path for our deification is true, beautiful, and, as you say, profound beyond expression.

The problem is not that he wasn't divine, but that he did not attain all power in Heaven and earth until the completion of his mortal mission and his resurrection. It was only then that an ultimate state of perfection and godhood were acquired in their fullness.

It would be difficult for me to understand how one described as having been in his pre-existent state "the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things" (e.g., Mosiah 3:8; Helaman 14:12; cf. Ephesians 3:9, Colossians 1:16; John 1:10 ) could not have had all power in heaven and earth. So, I am going to have to take Jesus literally here when, in John 17:5, he spoke of his pending glorification as returning to his pre-existent glory. Did he gain something from becoming mortal? Yes, of course. He acquired a body, experience to succor us in our temptations and afflictions (Hebrews 2:18), and a myriads of saved souls to join him in deified humanity.

Thank God for that!

Thanks again,

Don

Edited February 18, 2012 by DonBradley

[wenglund]

Hi Wade,

I guess the question would be what is meant by "perfected" here. It would be interesting to look at the Greek (which as I understand it means "complete").

In any case, I'm not aware of scriptures teaching that Jesus came here for his salvation rather than ours.

I think such theological issues are important. But I wonder if sometimes I overemphasize their importance. I've experienced God's Spirit, blessings, and grace at various times, when I held various doctrinal understandings about Him. He hasn't cast me aside because I've misunderstood, either in one direction or another. And surely most of my current understandings are sufficiently incomplete, if not just misdirected, as to be technically wrong (or worse).

Above all precise theologizing, we should be certain we love, honor, and worship God, and Him only, in our lives, to trust in His boundless goodness and mercy, to live as truly as we can to the relationship He offers us, and to seek to be like Him.

I am capable of getting so stuck in intellectual matters that relate to these things that I give priority to spinning my wheels on those, instead of spending more time in prayer, in feasting from scripture, and in trying to live out as much I can to others God's mercy to me and accomplish His purposes so far as I understand them.

The truth is that when it comes to such deep and ultimate things as the exact nature of God and how the Godhead is one, I am way out of my freaking depth! Still, I have to believe something about all this--hopefully with a humility that reflects the true depths of my ignorance. Fundamentally, I believe that God is good--really and truly good: the best we can imagine and so, so much more. I believe that God is transcendent. And I have to believe that what the scriptures so pound on--that God is one--is true in some very strong, and not merely a trivial, sense. Perhaps my understanding of how this is so is mostly off. But at this point in my life I can't help believing that there is unity behind all the plurality. I also have to have some belief about how we are related to God, and how much we are capable of becoming like Him. My present solution to this is to believe that we are less capable of being what God is than, say, Bruce R. McConkie thought, but more capable of this than traditional Christians have thought. I see so much reason to be optimistic about humankind--and it seems, given Christ's invitation that we join him in glory, that God shares my optimism. Or, rather, than I am just sharing His.

I've thought of God in different ways over time, and these do affect, somewhat, how I relate to Him. When I think of God as...close to us, even somehow related, rather than wholly Other, it makes a big difference. If God is wholly Other, it's easy to feel a heightened awe, but it's more an awe of bafflement than of anything else. But if human beings and God are more akin than traditional theology wants to admit, then not only are we more fit to partake of His nature, but it is also so much easier to feel connected to God, loved by and loving of Him, and to relate to Him intimately in prayer. If the gulf between humankind and God is bridgeable--and Christ shows that it is--then God is obviously not "wholly Other," and the Father is more akin to us than traditional Christians have imagined Him to be.

So, doctrinally, I want to chart a path that doesn't reject one value for another. I want to perceive God's reality in a way that neither slights human potential nor diminishes God's holiness and power, that neither distances God from our approach to Him in loving prayer as a Father nor tries to bring Him close only by dragging Him down to where we are.

Undoubtedly my precise understandings are all in error. But hopefully I am erring in the right ballpark, and my foul balls are flying closer and closer to fair. Or that, at least, is my prayer.

In any case, I should probably start reducing my participation in these interesting discussions and reinvesting more of this time and effort from here into actualizing the faith I do have.

Don

To me, the "perfection" that Christ achieved during his incarnation (from grace to grace) and subsequent resurrection is that he was not only better able to understand the mortal trvail and succor those in need of succoring, but he was able to obtain a glorified resurrected body like unto his Father, with all the advantages that may entail. As I understand it, Christ's reason for condescending and coming to earth was both to show us the way to our Father as welll as for he, himself, to reach the end of that way and become even as the Father.

I can accept, though, if others choose to see it differently.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Rob Bowman]

Don,

I'm now going to respond to your second post in this thread, concerning the question of modalism in the Book of Mormon.

First, let me lay out my position very briefly. I don't maintain that the Book of Mormon is consistently modalistic. I think there are some passages that appear to express what amounts to modalism and other passages that fit better something more like the traditional Trinitarian theology. Then again, every system of modalism I have seen that tries to take seriously the New Testament ends up with some systemic incoherence, so lack of consistency does not decisively refute a modalistic understanding of the usual Book of Mormon passages (though it can raise legitimate cautions).

You wrote:

The issue of whether Book of Mormon Christology is modalistic is also one where my thinking has evolved. I was long convinced that the modalistic reading was the reading. I now think the matter is much more complex.

I would agree with that statement.

You wrote:

The main seemingly modalistic text in the book is fairly early on, in Mosiah 15. This text sounds largely like modalism, except with a snag. As Ostler and Paulsen have pointed out, the Father and the Son are described in verse 7 as having distinct wills. One could, perhaps, argue that this can still be modalistic, but that point would need to be argued--not assumed. Without a solid argument for how one divine person could have been understood to have two wills, we are left with the implication that the Father and the Son are two persons.

A legitimate question, at least. What the text says about the two wills, though, blunts the objection. "Yea, even so he shall be led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death, the will of the Son being swallowed up in the will of the Father" (Mosiah 15:7). There are different ways one could understand this statement, but it seems that the point is that the Son's "will" was completely overwhelmed, overshadowed, or overtaken by the Father's "will." I suppose this might be explained somehow on the model that the Father and the Son were two separate deities, but the more likely interpretation is that the human will of the Son was subsumed under the overwhelming divine will of the Father. Such a reading actually fits modalism quite nicely. Modalism affirms that God manifested himself in the flesh as a human being, thereby becoming the Father (= God, deity) and the Son (=man, humanity). The humanity of Christ in some sense would have a human "will," but by virtue of the prior, preeminent nature of his deity the divine "will" would end up as the controlling, dominant will. Modalists routinely interpret Jesus' statement in Gethsemane, "Not my will but your will be done" to mean that the human will of the God-man was subordinated to his divine will. Mosiah 15:7 fits that paradigm to a T.

You wrote:

I would suggest (and I don't know if this is where Ostler and Paulsen go with this, but it may be the same place) that the text is better read, not as teaching modalism, but rather as teaching an "incarnational" view of Christ's divine Sonship.

I think this is actually not far off. Historically, modalism was emerging in Christianity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries right as the eternal Sonship of Christ was increasingly being questioned by many who were otherwise Trinitarian. The temporal-Sonship Trinitarians and the modalists agreed that Christ's Sonship denoted his humanity and therefore that "the Son" as such did not exist before the Incarnation. Although the two views remained distinct in an important way (which I will explain shortly), they were and are uncomfortably close in a significant way. At the very least, the temporal-Sonship view could function as a stepping-stone across the stream from the Trinitarian to the modalist side. I am not arguing for a causal relationship between the two views but simply noting that they both emerged about the same time and shared some common criticisms of the traditional understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity.

You wrote:

In the orthodox Christian creeds, Christ is described as "eternally begotten" from the Father--i.e., his divine Sonship is understood to consist in his perpetually emanating (if that's the right word) from the Father. But there is another view in traditional Christianity of the sense in which Christ is the Son, and that is that his Sonship consists in his having incarnated and thus become the Son.

Mosiah 15 speaks of Christ "becoming the Father and the Son" (verse 3), which could easily be understood to mean that prior to his human embodiment, the second divine person in the Godhead had not taken on "Sonship," because he had not yet embodied: before this there was no incarnational distinction of roles between God the First and God the Second; so each, as Creator, could be called "the Father." But once God the Second embodied, or incarnated--which also seems a proper way to say it (verse 1--"God himself shall come down")--he became "the Son," which the passage equates with his embodiment: "because he dwelleth in the flesh he shall be called the Son" (verse 2).

The big difference between the temporal-Sonship Trinitarian view and the modalist view can be seen right here. Whereas the former could affirm that the Logos or Second Person became the Son, they could not affirm that he became the Father and the Son. It was modalism that argued that God in becoming incarnate had become both Father and Son. Thus the language of Mosiah 15 seems to fit the modalist model better than the temporal-Sonship model even though, as I said, they share an important idea in common.

You wrote:

Later Book of Mormon passages, particularly during Jesus' ministry to the Nephites, draw a sharper distinction between the persons of the Father and the Son (and also the Holy Ghost) than Abinadi does here (see, e.g., 3 Nephi 11). But the Book of Mormon isn't as explicit on this as it could be. I can't recall any passages where it portrays interaction between God the First and God the Second before the latter is born in the flesh, or where someone sees them simultaneously. But if anyone can think of such passages, I'm very interested.

I agree with what you say here. 3 Nephi seems more "Trinitarian" than "modalist," in my judgment, but it is not explicitly Trinitarian. Oneness Pentecostals, the largest modalist movement today, would find little or nothing in 3 Nephi to challenge their view that they do not already find and finesse away in the New Testament.

You wrote:

Then what is the meaning of the seemingly "modalistic" passages in the book?. It is perhaps notable that when Christ is referred to in the Book of Mormon as "the Father," it is usually (though not always) during his premortal existence.

Most of the Book of Mormon narrative (189 out of 239 chapters, or 79%) is set in the time before Christ's mortality, so proportionately this is what one would expect. Also, as stated above, I would agree that 3 Nephi has little in it to suggest modalism even if a determined modalist could accommodate himself to what it says. In modalist thinking, God prior to the Incarnation could be called "Father" in the general sense of Creator of the world, but he became Father in relation to the Son only in the Incarnation (in which Christ is both God and man, Father and Son).

You wrote:

And, even more notably, he is referred to as "the Son" only once before his birth--when he appears to the brother of Jared. But even then the brother of Jared is seeing, not only the Lord's spirit body (Ether 3:16), but also that he will come in the flesh (Ether 3:7-9). His vision is thus partly "proleptic"--showing things that have not yet happened as if they had.

This is, as explained above, perfectly consistent with modalism, according to which God becomes both Father and Son only when he manifests himself in mortal flesh.

Thus, when the Lord tells the brother of Jared that he is "the Father and the Son," he also tells him he is "Jesus Christ," using the name he would receive at his birth in Bethlehem (along with his title as Messiah) and tells him that he is seeing forward to when "I shall take upon me flesh and blood" (Ether 3:9, 14).

As explained above, his self-identification as "the Father and the Son" speaking proleptically with regard to his human identity as Jesus Christ (as you quite correctly point out) fits perfectly with modalism but not with temporal-Sonship Trinitarianism.

You wrote:

Given all this, if one had to classify the Book of Mormon as modalistic or Trinitarian, one would better identify it as Trinitarian, but not necessarily teaching the doctrine of the Trinity in the same way as the orthodox creeds.

This is not a bad assessment in my opinion. I do think the Book of Mormon's "Trinitarianism" has a strong streak of modalism in it, but the end result is as you say something close to the Trinity yet not matching the orthodox doctrine.

[Cobalt-70]

Such a reading actually fits modalism quite nicely. Modalism affirms that God manifested himself in the flesh as a human being, thereby becoming the Father (= God, deity) and the Son (=man, humanity). The humanity of Christ in some sense would have a human "will," but by virtue of the prior, preeminent nature of his deity the divine "will" would end up as the controlling, dominant will. Modalists routinely interpret Jesus' statement in Gethsemane, "Not my will but your will be done" to mean that the human will of the God-man was subordinated to his divine will. Mosiah 15:7 fits that paradigm to a T.

This is very consistent with 3 Nephi 1:14, in which "the voice of the Lord" comes out of heaven and said "I come unto my own...to do the will, both of the Father and of the Son--of the Father because of me, and of the Son because of my flesh." So whoever is speaking says that he is identified with the Father, but his flesh is identified with the Son.

Edited February 19, 2012 by Cobalt-70