Latter-Day Saint Misunderstanding Of The Trinity Of Historical Christianity

[Darren10]

From calmoriah's wiki link:

Oneness Pentecostalism teaches that God is one Person, and that the Father (a spirit) is united with Jesus (a man) as the Son of God. However, Oneness Pentecostalism differs somewhat by rejecting sequential modalism, and by the full acceptance of the begotten humanity of the Son, not eternally begotten, who was the man Jesus and was born, crucified, and risen, and not the deity. This directly opposes Patripassianism and the pre-existence of the Son, which Sabellianism does not.

Oneness Pentecostals believe that Jesus was "Son" only when he became flesh on earth, but was the Father before being made man. They refer to the Father as the "Spirit" and the Son as the "Flesh". But they believe that Jesus and the Father are one essential Person. Though operating as different "manifestations" or "modes". Oneness Pentecostals reject the Trinity doctrine, viewing it as pagan and un-Scriptural, and hold to the Jesus' Name doctrine with respect to baptisms. They are often referred to as "Modalists" or "Sabellians" or "Jesus Only". Oneness Pentecostalism can be compared to Sabellianism, or can be described as holding to a form of Sabellianism, as both are Nontrinitarian, and as both believe that Jesus was "Almighty God in the Flesh", but they do not totally identify each other.

Perhaps Questing Beast believes in Oneness Pentacostalism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabellianism

[Darren10]

You are correct. I'm embarrassed when early Mormons describe the trinity as a really "BIG" god or when today's Mormons try to tell you we believe in the trinity too. Nothing could be further from the truth. The three persons of the trinity are indeed separate and distinct individuals hypostatically connected to the same being. But you guys ought to be embarrassed too by the complete anti Biblical nature of the trinity doctrine.

I'd say that Mormons are very much trinitarians, just not in the orthodox / historical / creed all sense. According to the strict meaning of "trinity", Mormons very much believe that true worship includes the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

[teddyaware]

For Classical Trinitarians, they are one God, one Being, three persons.

http://www.vatican.v...sm/p1s2c1p2.htm

Most interestingly, without much effort at all, one could easily construe some of the content of the 5th of the Lectures on Faith to assert that Joseph Smith believed the Father and the Son are consubstantial (of the same substance) in much the same way a Catholic or Protestant doctor of theology might assert. The fascinating difference with Joseph Smith's presentation of consubstantiation in the Lectures on Faith is that he goes so far as to define exactly what the common substance is that unifies the Father and the Son as one. That unifiying substance is primarily declared to be the mind of God, which mind the text of the 5th lecture makes synonomous with the Holy Spirit.

"He (Christ), being the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, and having overcome, received a fulness of the glory of the Father, possessing the same mind with the Father, which mind is the Holy Spirit that bears record of the Father and the Son. These three are one; or, in other words, these three constitute the great, matchless, governing, and supreme power over all things, by whom all things were created and made. And these three constitute the Godhead and are one. The Father and the Son possess the same mind, the same wisdom, glory, power, and fulness filling all in all."

So the divine substance the Father and the Son share -- and all Latter-day Saints should know the Spirit spoken of here is material and therefore of real substance -- is the Holy Spirit or Holy Mind. Therefore, though some may bristle at the thought, according to Joseph Smith, the Father and the Son share the same heavenly substance, and are, in a manner of speaking, consubstantial. For both are filled with and share the fulness of a very real and tangible substance called the Holy Spirit (aka divine mind). And what could be more substantial than a real material (though refined) substance. And remember, Joseph Smith said there can be no such thing as an immaterial substance.

Edited March 6, 2013 by teddyaware

[emarkp]

For Classical Trinitarians, they are one God, one Being, three persons

Yep. 2 + 2 = 5 for sufficiently large values of 2

In other words, just add some 'homo' to my 'ousia' and POOF you've defined the problem away!

Like many others, when I asked my non-LDS friends about their understanding of the Trinity, they invariably described what I later learned was the modalism heresy. My mission experience in Chile was similar. It's almost like those creeds were only effective at splitting the post-apostasy church into more and smaller groups.

[Storm Rider]

You realize these statements you've made are simply claims, right?

I am cognizant of when I make opinions just as I recognize it in others. I have spent the last several years studying the first six hundred years of Christianity. It is not difficult to see how the Apostasy evolved. The moment you begin voting on what is and what is not truth is the moment you must acknowledge that the church is being run by men without any pretense for revelation to occur. Just curious; do you posit that philosophy had nothing to do with the theology of the first Councils?

[Calm]

Most interestingly, without much effort at all, one could easily construe some of the content of the 5th of the Lectures on Faith to assert that Joseph Smith believed the Father and the Son are consubstantial

And the Lectures were removed from the Canon, perhaps because those who wrote them were too fond of man's ideas and when an attempt was made to include them in the 81 version, they were again rejected.

And authorship studies favour Phelps or Pratt over JSmith as writer of 5:

http://maxwellinstit...=47&chapid=1556

Also:

There might be stronger warrant for attributing the lectures to Joseph Smith if we could reasonably project present-day church decision-making processes back to 1834–1835 without anachronism. It is not likely that counselors in a contemporary First Presidency would ever try to impose statements of doctrine on a president if he did not fully endorse them. The church has, however, matured a great deal since 1835. The internal dynamics of first presidencies today exhibit a unity of purpose and approach and a deference for the president that Joseph Smith may have dreamed of, but appears never to have enjoyed. This was a period of time in which Joseph's preeminent role as president was not clearly established (see D&C 28:1–7; 30:7; and 43:1–7). And within a few years all the key actors in this particular episode turned against Joseph openly and left the church.

For the same 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants in which the theological lectures were first published, we have clear evidence of other significant materials being included despite explicit, repeated requests from Joseph Smith to leave them out. According to Brigham Young, Oliver Cowdery had included the statement on marriage in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants against Joseph's wishes.33 Yet Joseph's printed name leads the list of signatories to the prefatory letter prepared six months earlier for that volume. How can we conclude any particular level of enthusiasm for the lectures on Joseph's part merely from their inclusion and his name on the prefatory letter? To do so would be to project our own enthusiasm onto him in the absence of any clear evidence. In all these matters, Joseph may have felt bound by the majority of the four-man committee—and later by the vote of the 1835 conference—to accept the new publication, even though it was presided over by Rigdon and Cowdery in Joseph's absence. Further, the letter of preface clearly recognizes that it was the Kirtland High Council that commissioned this work, not the presidency itself. In terms of the decision-making process regarding the composition and publication of the Lectures on Faith, the only clearly documented role played by Joseph Smith was his membership on the four-man committee that prepared the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants for publication. Given the historical record, it is perfectly possible that Joseph's role was limited to the preparation of his own revelations, which constituted the bulk of that volume. The most obvious procedure for that committee would have been to make each member responsible for the preparation of his own contributions to the larger volume. If that were their procedure, it would also make sense for each of them to be signatories to the preface, even though we have such clear evidence that Joseph wished some of the materials to be excluded. Could it be that Joseph felt it necessary—given the dynamics of his presidency—to let them include their personal contributions in order to get his revelations in print?

Why were the Lectures on Faith included in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants? They were added to the revelations of Joseph Smith along with two additional items known to have been written by Oliver Cowdery (and possibly W. W. Phelps): the statements on government and marriage.34 The preface to the 1835 edition, dated 17 February 1835, alludes rather clearly to each of these three nonrevelatory items and indicates that they were written in response to criticisms of the church. This is generally recognized to be the motive for the statement on marriage, which goes overboard to make Mormon marriage look identical to nineteenth-century Christian American practices. It is also commonly seen as the motive for the statement on government, which is mostly a summary of standard tenets of American democratic liberalism and ignores interesting political concepts in the Book of Mormon and other revelations to Joseph Smith.

The reasons given for the Kirtland High Council having appointed the committee to prepare these materials for publication are "adduced" by the committee to have been as follows: "They knew that the church was evil spoken of in many places—its faith and belief misrepresented, and the way of truth thus subverted. By some it was represented as disbelieving the Bible, by others as being an enemy to all good order and uprightness, and by others as being injurious to the peace of all governments civil and political" ("Preface," Doctrine and Covenants, 1835). The three common accusations listed in the last sentence are rebutted in the order given by (1) the lectures, (2) the statement on marriage, and (3) the statement on government.

Similarly, viewing the lectures as a response to criticism might help to explain their atypical style. Some of the early brethren were apparently embarrassed by Joseph's lack of education and the simple language of his inspired writings.35 The idea of taking a leading role in the School of the Elders or the publication process might come easily to Oliver Cowdery, Frederick G. Williams, W. W. Phelps, or Sidney Rigdon, all of whom boasted some education and had at some point earned their living as school teachers or publishers. Furthermore, the expansions of the 1835 edition may be seen as a means of reducing the preeminence of Joseph's revelations by combining them with contributions from others—the two doctrinal statements from Cowdery and Phelps and the theological lectures from Rigdon—and placing the lectures first in the compilation.

It is intriguing to note that when Rigdon left Nauvoo in 1844 and organized his own Church of Christ in Pittsburgh, he started up a paper (another Messenger and Advocate) and republished the seven Kirtland lectures in a monthly series between October 1845 and March 1846.36 This action clearly indicates that Rigdon placed high value on the lectures, quite plausibly because of his own primary role as author or chief author. Also, while the lectures include 136 Bible quotations and 11 JST quotations, the revelations to Joseph are cited only twice (Lecture 7), and the Book of Mormon is referred to in only a single paragraph of Lecture 1. The predominant stance of the lectures is to derive its premises from the Bible alone, while ignoring the vast treasury of knowledge made available through Joseph Smith's revelations. The only significant exception is the emphasis on the JST in Lecture 2.

Edited March 6, 2013 by calmoriah

[Vance]

Yep. 2 + 2 = 5 for sufficiently large values of 2

Or perhaps, 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 for sufficiently small values of 1.

[teddyaware]

For Classical Trinitarians, they are one God, one Being, three persons.

I need to clarify. Remember, by their own admission traditional Trinitarians do not take the Greek word homoousios to mean "one being" in the usual sense of those words. Rather, they believe there are three distinct personages in the Trinity and the actual way these three are considered consubstantial is left an unresolved mystery. In fact it's very likely that the Sabellian heresy grows out of a misapplication of this unique usage of the expression "one being" (one substance). The Modalists attempt to partially demystify the traditional Trinity, taking homoousios one step too far by claiming there is in reality only one person in the Godhead.

Traditionally, exactly how the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one is left up in the air. Hence the rejection of the one personage heresy. This presentation can easily become circular, but the fact is that homoousios is at the very heart of the traditional Trinity's mystery and its definition has been intentionally left vague. Until they can clearly and unambiguously define the term homoousios, there can be no productive debate between Trinitarian traditinalists and the Latter-day Saints.

Edited March 6, 2013 by teddyaware

[Calm]

Remember, by their own admission traditional Trinitarians do not take the Greek word homoousios to mean "one being" in the usual sense of those words.

The difference being the term is being applied to an "infinite being" for which the rules are different, at least that is my understanding as taught by a informed Catholic....and other Catholics can correct me if I have misinterpreted it. http://www.newadvent...n/06612a.htm#IA

Regarding the mystery of the Trinity or three Divine Persons in God, which can be knownonly by revelation, it is enough to say here that properly understood the mystery contains no contradiction, but on the contrary adds much that is helpful to our inadequate knowledge of the infinite.

Until they can clearly and unambiguously define the term homoousios, there can be no productive debate between Trinitarian traditinalists and the Latter-day Saints.

I agree. I think it is inappropriate for LDS to try and use someone else's philosophical terms in a new way when there is absolutely no need for it and especially to make it appeal our beliefs are more similar than they are. Edited March 6, 2013 by calmoriah

[Anakin7]

From part of The Nicene Creed [from Memory] - "Within the nature of the one God There are 3 persons ..." This states 6 levels/tiers/ stations of reality - #1st level/Tier/Station -There is GOD who resides everywhere present past/present/future Omnipotent/Omnicient/Omnipresent without body/parts/passions, 2nd leve/Tier/Stationl- He [it- no gender]] has a nature [All communucal attributes included] #3 Within [inside] Not known what that is that fills the "within"/"inside" of the nature, There resides 3 more levels tiers/stations of reality -Father/Son/Holy Ghost/Spirit.

In His Debt/Grace

Anakin7

LDS JEDI KNIGHT

[ERayR]

I've recently become confused over the following: if the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; but noe three gods but one God and the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons yet one being than who is "God" under trinitarian belief?

This has bothered me and the explanations I have gotten seem to point to a what instead of who. By that I mean it is a description of the Godhead or their unity. I could be wrong, it is so easy to talk past one another when terms are not defined precisely for both parties.

[ERayR]

That is why it is nice these days to have authoritative sources, such as vatican.va with the Catechism available for everyone to read.

Agreed but then that still leaves the problem of getting a precise understanding of what the terms mean to each party. We often talk in terms familiar to both sides but which each understands a little differently.

[Anakin7]

This has bothered me and the explanations I have gotten seem to point to a what instead of who. By that I mean it is a description of the Godhead or their unity. I could be wrong, it is so easy to talk past one another when terms are not defined precisely for both parties.

I have been told [and read] that GOD is 1 What and 3 who's [3 who's in one what]. Reminds me of the abbott and Costello Baseball parady - "who's on first ?"...

In His Debt/Grcae

Anakin7

LDS JEDI KNIGHT

[ERayR]

I need to clarify. Remember, by their own admission traditional Trinitarians do not take the Greek word homoousios to mean "one being" in the usual sense of those words

A very good example of what happens when one begins to dissemble words to obfuscate what they are really saying.

[Spammer]

The ancient church refrained from dogmatically defining the nature of God's being precisely because that nature is infinite. As Calmoriah said, the rules are different. We humans have no experience of the infinite, rooted as we are within space and time. The trinitarian God is uncreated and infinite; we are created and finite. God's essence (being) is infinite; ours is finite. We completely lack an experiential frame of reference. The Infinite God transcends time and space and his inner essence (being) is necessarily mysterious to us, as our finite bodies, minds, concepts, language, and knowledge cannot on their own transcend space and time to the 'place' where God 'dwells'. You can see how that language reveals our limitation and dependency on living within space-time and forces us to confront the Mystery of God's being using inadequate tools. 'Place' and 'dwells' are terms proper only to the finite realm of space. Referring to God as 'substance' also introduces error, as a substance takes up space and is a 'thing'. Hence, the uneducated idea I had as an LDS youth and a missionary that the trinitiarian God was some kind of amorphous blob 'floating' 'out there' 'somewhere'. It's all to easy to smuggle finite concepts into to any contemplation of the infinite, hence the danger. In hindsight, that limited understanding on my part explains the amused facial expression I encountered when I used that language in a conversation with a Catholic investigator. Perhaps he wouldn't have shown me the door if I had been better informed (my claims about a universal Apostasy didn't help).

Let me see if I can make a feeble attempt at explaining my understanding of the ancient idea of God's nature. The trinitarian God does not possess local coordinates in space-time; he transcends. God does not live in the universe with us. He doesn't live in any universe. He is outside and beyond any and all universes. He transcends and is utterly Other, and is necessarily spirit - not matter. Our minds cannot conceive of Someone who exists and is a Person, yet does not does not 'live' or 'reside' 'anywhere', but is "everywhere present and fills all things". In this view, the history of our salvation is nothing else than the self-revelation of this ineffable and mysterious God to us within space and time, God's entrance into our history in the person of Jesus. To trinitarians, that event is a mind-boggling miracle and mystery. In Christ, the infinite God is revealed to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In other words, God's divine essence is mysterious, infinite, and one (the infinite cannot be divided), but that essence is manifested in Christ as a hypostatic union of three persons. Our inability to grasp with our finite minds how the infinite is simultaneously One and Three explains assertions about how the nature of God is mysterious. By contrast, in our experience, we humans are individually-distinct finite beings and persons. We each are discrete human beings and persons; one being in one person. We have no experience of infinite being, but to trinitarians that infinite being (God) is reveled to be one being in three persons. To non-trinitarians who might reply, "none of this makes any sense", the answer is "of course it doesn't; any attempt to fit the infinite God within a finite conceptual and linguistic box of our own devising (which it cannot help being, by definition), leads to nonsense. This is why we trinitarians refer to God as Mystery." Anytime we attempt to force the infinite into our finite minds, error is the inevitable result, such as the idea of a God who looks like us, complete with long, white hair and a beard. To trinititarians this idea is nonsense.

"God cannot be grasped by the mind. If he could be grasped, he would not be God." - Evagrius of Pontus (4th Century)

I hope that helps.

Edited March 6, 2013 by Spammer

[ERayR]

I have been told [and read] that GOD is 1 What and 3 who's [3 who's in one what]. Reminds me of the abbott and Costello Baseball parady - "who's on first ?"...

In His Debt/Grcae

Anakin7

LDS JEDI KNIGHT

I ask first. Who's on first?

[ERayR]

We humans have no experience of the infinite, rooted as we are within space and time.

I hope that helps.

Men do. Have you ever waited in the car with a crying baby while your wife ran into the store to get a few things for dinner?

[Spammer]

Haha! Touché.

[Anakin7]

I ask first. Who's on first?

Well The Trinity only has 3 lines [Triangle] as compared to a baseball "Diamond" which has 4 lines but if you are looking from above the Holy Ghost would be on the right corner where the 1st Baseman would be.

In His Debt/Grace

Anakin7

LDS JEDI KNIGHT

Edited March 6, 2013 by Anakin7

[ERayR]

Well The Trinity only has 3 lines [Triangle] as compared to a baseball "Diamond" which has 4 lines but if you are looking from above the Holy Ghost would be on the right corner where the 1st Baseman would be.

In His Debt/Grace

Anakin7

LDS JEDI KNIGHT

You really don't have a clue do you?

[Damien the Leper]

I am cognizant of when I make opinions just as I recognize it in others. I have spent the last several years studying the first six hundred years of Christianity. It is not difficult to see how the Apostasy evolved. The moment you begin voting on what is and what is not truth is the moment you must acknowledge that the church is being run by men without any pretense for revelation to occur. Just curious; do you posit that philosophy had nothing to do with the theology of the first Councils?

Not at all. There is not a single religion in existence that doesn't or hasn't applied philosophy more than revelation. That would be sorely naive.

[mfbukowski]

Why make such a bold claim? Because at least insofar as the issue of the three separate and distinct personages of the Godhead is concerned, the Catholics and Protestants forthrightly declare they don't understand at all how the separate personages of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one God. And it's interesting to contemplate that for all they know, once the mystery of the Trinity is finally explained to them, they may come to realize Joseph Smith had it right after all. How are they to know until they do know? Until our traditional Christian brethren can definitively define their terms as to precisely why the separate personages of the Godhead are one God, there can be no real debate. It's not good enough to say it's a mystery, because one day the mystery will be revealed. Then, and only then, can a proper comparison of our mutual understandings on the doctrine of the oneness of the Trinity take place. And that day of the fullness of the revelation of God will come, for we read:

12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Any thoughts?

I think you are exactly right.

If they just left it as a "mystery" it would be fine with me- I think our explanation is much better, at least in that it IS an explanation.

But the problem is that they bring in Scholastic philosophy in talking about "being" and "substance" to tie it all together with transubstantiation, and in my opinion that is where the error begins.

But now to read the thread further.

[ERayR]

But the problem is that they bring in Scholastic philosophy in talking about "being" and "substance" to tie it all together with transubstantiation, and in my opinion that is where the error begins.

This is where, for me, the fog drops to ground level and becomes pea soup consistency.

[mfbukowski]

I can agree with the Trinity from a distance, but the closer to the details I get, the less I agree/understand it. To me, it contains declarations that are mutually exclusive that seem to be by design to uphold the "mystery" aspect of it.

The problem is, the classic doctrine really cannot be "explained"- it's a mystery. That's because the only way three people can be "one" is the way we see it- as a kind of collective, family, or committee.

The problem is not the classic belief- that it is a mystery- (because it was unknown and Christianity, coming from a Judaic tradition, wanted to keep the idea of monotheism)- not the belief, but the EXPLANATIONS that cannot avoid contradictions.

You can't explain a mystery without paradox- that's why it is a mystery!

[mfbukowski]

Yes, it is. And modalism, is a big no-no in trinitarian belief. Questing Beast has his own personal quest to clear up what he himself believes and to perhaps do so before condemning Joseph Smith for what he believed.

Nailed it. And there is no talking to the guy so I don't bother.