Posted on 10/08/2007 7:49:32 AM PDT by colorcountry
Not only is Mormonism a Christian faith, it is the truest form of Christianity, said speaker after speaker on the first day of the 177th Semiannual LDS General Conference. LDS authorities were responding to the allegation that Mormonism isn't part of Christianity. Made by different mainline Protestant and Catholic churches and repeated constantly during coverage of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, the claim is based on Mormonism's beliefs about God, its rejection of ancient ideas about the Trinity still widely accepted, and the LDS Church's extra-biblical scriptures. "It is not our purpose to demean any person's belief nor the doctrine of any religion," said Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland in the afternoon session. "But if one says we are not Christians because we do not hold a fourth- or fifth-century view of the Godhead, then what of those first [Christians], many of whom were eye-witnesses of the living Christ, who did not hold such a view either?"
{snip}
The day's sermons included many familiar themes, including the importance of faith, the need for pure thoughts and actions, avoiding pornography reaching out to neighbors and eliminating spiritual procrastination. Hinckley talked about the destructive nature of anger in marriages, on the road, and in life, urging Mormons to "control your tempers, to put a smile upon your faces, which will erase anger; speak with words of love and peace, appreciation and respect."
Pass it my way, please, and add the salt shaker too.
L,
I agree, if you shade the truth to hide what you believe,
it serves no purpose to ask you a question.
best,
ampu
Not the one I go to! Totally not true!
No, you do not agree with me.
This is the second time you have insinuated that I am less than truthful. You previously wrote:
sorry, I simply can’t believe you are being truthful, but it seems you are avoiding telling what you really believe - if you are a mormon. [sic]
I suggest that you look up the meaning of ad hominem. The term refers to a logical fallacy that you should try to avoid in the future.
L,
I am not implying you are less than truthful.
I am stating you are hiding the truth of what
you believe and making it appear you believe
something else. Not an ad hominem attack.
A statement of fact, based on your answer.
You avoided answering the question by changing
the playing field so you could appear to answer
the question... which you did not answer.
... in other words, you avoided telling the
truth by trying to appear to believe something
normal.
I suggest you simply tell the truth. Own what
you believe. But do as you wish.
best,
ampu
Now you are spinning. Hiding the truth while pretending to believe something one does not actually believe is a good definition of "less than truthful."
Not an ad hominem attack. A statement of fact, based on your answer.
You need to look up the word fact also.
I suggest you simply tell the truth. Own what you believe. But do as you wish.
I have never done otherwise.
I think I’m gonna have to have a Margarita with mine now ...
L,
Like I said, do as you wish. Your privilege.
ampu
OK if I assumed Fast Coyote's alter divine ego (I guess if it's divinity than I should say "altar ego") for a moment...
And if we started to receive in these threads "A Second Testament of Fast Coyote" (having appeared to us due to our great potential to eventually turn "white and delightsome")...
...then I'm sure we could come up with some key questions to discern if we're dealing with an original Fast Coyote, or some imposter.
Now you might claim, that all contemporary revelations are by the very same Fast Coyote whose ministry and teachings were recorded by FREEPER ID #123456789, and FREEPER ID# 234567890, etc. That there is only one Fast Coyote.
But what happens when questions reveal that they couldn't possibly be the same coyote?
So, say Wiley Coyote enters this thread to a side door, and we fire away query upon query:
"Oh, Wabe Juan Coyote One, tell us, where were you created?"
"I was organized from spirit dust accumulating in the galaxy of the Kolobian Universe."
"But the previous revelations of Fast Coyote tell us he had no beginning; but in fact created every FREEPER."
"Yeah, that's me, too."
"Oooo-kaaaaaaaaay."
"Is there a momma-mia coyote?"
"Well, not officially; but common coyote sense makes reason dare, that we've all got a coyote ancestor yonder there."
"But why no definitive mention of such a divine coyote in your previous or even contemporary revelations?"
"Well, to be honest with you, if you knew the one-who-spirit-birthed-you was lookin' over your shoulder, would you obey the coyote gospel and commandments 'cause you wanted to you or because your spirit mama told ya to? Ain't that right, huh?"
"Next question: Now in your old FREEPER revelations, we ne'er heard a word about Lucipher Coyote being you're little bro. Now it's Elder Coyote this and Elder Coyote that, and when we ask you point blank if 'Elder' includes being the elder of Lucipher Coyote, you hem and haw, but eventually come partially clean, 'Yup, little Luci's robbed Kolob & has festered a big prob.'"
"He who is without sibling rivalries can toss the first seer stone."
"Now how come it's been OK all along to pray directly to you, to worship you and to call you 'Lord and God'...and when we see even your 'Second Testament' it still sanctions these devoted activities...but then we hear from your followers that your CGA (General Coyote Authorities) frown on being too overt with these practices lest they claim to have some 'special relationship' with Fast Coyote. So which is it?"
"Well, some things have changed since my First Testament and even since my Second one, as well. You can pray to Coyote Father in my name. Isn't that enough? If I told you to openly worship me, well, that'd be fine, as long as you continue to worship Coyote Father and as long as you don't admit it around detractors, lest they accuse you of polycoyotism."
No problem, here you go...
From http://en.fairmormon.org/index.php/Godhead_and_the_Trinity
Since the Nicene Creed was first adopted in A.D. 325, it seems clear that there were many Christians in the first centuries following the resurrection of Christ who did not use it. Those who oppose calling the Latter-day Saints "Christians" need to explain whether Peter and Paul are "Christians," since they lived and practiced Christianity at a time when there was no Nicene Creed, and no Trinitarianism in the current sense.
Critics may try to argue that the Nicene Creed is merely a statement of Biblical principles, but Bible scholarship is very clear that the Nicene Creed was an innovation.
Was Nicean Trinitarianism always a key part of Christian belief?
There is abundant evidence that “Trinitarianism”, as now understood by the majority of Protestants and Catholics was not present in the Early Christian Church.
When we turn to the problem of the doctrine of the Trinity, we are confronted by a peculiarly contradictory situation. On the one hand, the history of Christian theology and of dogma teaches us to regard the dogma of the Trinity as the distinctive element in the Christian idea of God, that which distinguishes it from the idea of God in Judaism and in Islam, and indeed, in all forms of rational Theism. Judaism, Islam, and rational Theism are Unitarian. On the other hand, we must honestly admit that the doctrine of the Trinity did not form part of the early Christian-New Testament-message. Certainly, it cannot be denied that not only the word "Trinity", but even the explicit idea of the Trinity is absent from the apostolic witness of the faith. The doctrine of the Trinity itself, however, is not a Biblical Doctrine...[1]
What were early Christian beliefs on the nature of God?
We do know that Christian orthodoxy before Nicaea was not the Trinitarian creeds now popular:
'Subordinationism', it is true, was pre-Nicean orthodoxy.[2]
‘Subordinationism’ is a doctrine which means that Jesus and/or the Holy Ghost are ‘subordinate’ or ‘subject’ to God the Father. In subordinationism, Jesus must be a separate being from the Father, because you can’t be subject to yourself! This was the orthodox position before the Nicean council. Ideas that were once orthodox were later considered unacceptable after the councils altered and added to the doctrine.
Writers who are usually reckoned orthodox but who lived a century or two centuries before the outbreak of the Arian Controversy, such as Irenaeus and Tertullian and Novatian and Justin Martyr, held some views which would later, in the fourth century, have been branded heretical...Irenaeus and Tertullian both believed that God had not always been a Trinity but had at some point put forth the Son and the Spirit so as to be distinct from him. Tertullian, borrowing from Stoicism, believed that God was material (though only of a very refined material, a kind of thinking gas), so that his statement that Father, Son and Spirit were 'of one substance', beautifully orthodox though it sounds, was of a corporeality which would have profoundly shocked Origen, Athanasius and the Cappadocian theologians, had they known of it.[3]
And:
It [subordinationism] is a characteristic tendency in much Christian teaching of the first three centuries, and is a marked feature of such otherwise orthodox Fathers as St. Justin and Origen…Where the doctrine [of the Trinity] was elaborated, as e.g. in the writing of the Apologists, the language remained on the whole indefinite, and, from a later standpoint, was even partly unorthodox. Sometimes it was not free from a certain subordinationism.[4]
So, Christians whose ideas were completely orthodox earlier would have been considered ‘heretics’ (i.e. going against the accepted doctrine) after the Nicean councils. This seems to be clear evidence that the doctrine was radically changed.
One also notes that Paul and the other New Testament writers would have been likewise ‘unorthodox’. Eusebius, an early Church historian, was even termed "blatantly subordinationist" by a Catholic author.[5]
Even after the Trinitarian ideas were formed, there were three ‘camps’ of believers that understood the matter in very different ways:
If such was the teaching of Athanasius and his allies [i.e. homousis as numerical unity of substance, rather than ‘the same kind of being’ in the three persons of the Godhead] , at least three types of theology found shelter at different times in the anti-Nicean camp. The first, indefinite, on occasion ambiguous on the crucial issues, but on the whole conciliatory, reflects the attitude of the great conservative 'middle party'.... It's positive doctrine is that there are three divine hypostases [i.e. persons], separate in rank and glory but united in harmony of will.[6]
Thus, most believers initially believed that there were three persons with a united will. It was only later that this group was “won over” to Athanasius and his group’s brand of Trinitarianism, which is the basis for today’s understanding in most of Christianity. Indeed, Athanasius and his cadre were decidedly in the minority:
The victory over Arianism achieved at the Council was really a victory snatched by the superior energy and decision of a small minority with the aid of half-hearted allies. The majority did not like the business at all, and strongly disapproved of the introduction into the Creed . . . of new and untraditional and unscriptural terms.[7]
And, there is a noted tendency for some Christian writers to assume that the way they understand the nature of God is the only way in which anyone could have understood it. An evangelical scholar notes:
The view of God worked out in the early [postapostolic] church, the "biblical-classical synthesis," has become so commonplace that even today most conservative [Protestant and Catholic] theologians simply assume that it is the correct scriptural concept of God and thus that any other alleged biblical understanding of God . . . must be rejected. The classical view is so taken for granted that it functions as a preunderstanding that rules out certain interpretations of Scripture that do not "fit" with the conception of what is "appropriate" for God to be like, as derived from Greek metaphysics.[8]
Does the Bible contain also the necessary elements for Trinitarianism?
In order to argue successfully for the unconditionally and permanence of the ancient Trinitarian Creeds, it is necessary to make a distinction between doctrines, on the one hand, and on the terminology and conceptuality in which they were formulated on the other... Some of the crucial concepts employed by these creeds, such as "substance", "person", and "in two natures" are post-biblical novelties. If these particular notions are essential, the doctrines of these creeds are clearly conditional, dependent on the late Hellenistic milieu.[9]
Note that this author says that many of “the crucial concepts” are “post-biblical novelties”: that is, they are new ideas that arrived on the scene after the Bible was written. If the crucial concepts weren’t around until later, then the doctrine wasn’t around until later either. As the author notes, these ideas arose out of the “Hellenistic milieu”, that is: Greek philosophy.
It is clearly impossible (if one accepts historical evidence as relevant at all) to escape the claim that the later formulations of dogma cannot be reached by a process of deductive logic from the original propositions and must contain an element of novelty...The emergence of the full trinitarian doctrine was not possible without significant modification of previously accepted ideas.[10]
Said David Noel Freedman:
So in many was the Bible remains true to its “primitive” past [by accepting the strongly anthropomorphic understanding of God/Yahweh] and is less compatible with philosophical notions of an abstract being, or ultimate reality or ground of being. Just as there is an important and unbridgeable distance between Yahweh and the gods of Canaan, or those of Mesopotamia or Egypt or Greece or Rome, so there is at least an equal or greater distance from an Aristotelian unmoved mover, or even a Platonic Idea or Ideal. The biblical God is always and uncompromisingly personal: he is above all a person, neither more nor less.[11]
New ideas and concepts were required.
The formal doctrine of the Trinity as it was defined by the great church councils of the 4th and 5th centuries is not to be found in the New Testament.[12]
A Catholic encyclopedia notes that Trinitarianism doesn’t really appear until the last 25 years of the 4th century:
Trinitarian discussion, Roman Catholic as well as others, presents a somewhat unsteady silhouette. Two things have happened. There is the recognition on the part of exegetes and Biblical theologians, including a constantly growing number of Roman Catholics, that one should not speak of Trinitarianism in the New Testament without serious qualification. There is also the closely parallel recognition on the part of historians of dogma and systematic theologians that when one does speak of an unqualified Trinitarianism, one has moved from the period of Christian origins to, say, the last quadrant of the 4th century.[13]
A Jesuit [Catholic] scholar says this:
There is no formal doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament writers, if this means an explicit teaching that in one God there are three co-equal divine persons. But the three are there, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and a triadic ground plan is there, and triadic formulas are there...The Biblical witness to God, as we have seen, did not contain any formal or formulated doctrine of the Trinity, any explicit teaching that in one God there are three co-equal divine persons.[14]
The idea of “three” is present: but not as ‘three co-equal divine persons’ that are one being. An idea about the nature of God (or the Godhead) is present, but it is different from that which is taught as Trinitarianism.
Two authors even assert that the Apostle Paul, the four gospels, and Acts have no Trinitarian understanding:
...there is no trinitarian doctrine in the Synoptics or Acts...nowhere do we find any trinitarian doctrine [in the New Testament] of three distinct subjects of divine life and activity in the same God head...These passages [i.e. the Pauline epistles] give no doctrine of the Trinity, but they show that Paul linked together Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They give no trinitarian formula...but they offer material for the later development of trinitarian doctrine...[Paul] has no formal Trinitarian doctrine and no clear-cut realization of a Trinitarian problem…in John there is no trinitarian formula.[15]
And:
This double series of texts manifests Paul's lack of clarity in his conception of the relation of the Spirit to the Son. Paul shares with the Old Testament a more fluid notion of personality than the later theological refinements of nature, substance, and person. His lack of clarity should be respected for what it is and be regarded only as the starting point of the later development.[16]
So, Paul doesn’t even ‘realize’ that there is a ‘Trinitarian problem’. Could this be because for Paul there was no such problem, because the doctrine was unknown to him? It was not an issue in his era, because it was not taught by Jesus or the Apostles, and no one felt the need to reconcile divine revelation with Greek philosophy.
One author asserts that the Trinity is correct, but readily admits that:
The God whom we experience as triune is, in fact, triune. But we cannot read back into the New Testament, much less the Old Testament, the more sophisticated trinitarian theology and doctrine which slowly and often unevenly developed over the course of some fifteen centuries.[17]
Are there new ideas necessary for creedal Trinitarianism?
Robert Casey wrote long ago that “Origen’s development of Clement [of Alexandria’s] thought is characteristically thorough and systematic. He acknowledges that the doctrine of God’s immateriality is, at least formally, new, and asserts that the word asomatos ["no body" in Greek] had been unknown alike to biblical writers and to Christian theologians before his time.”[18]
Casey also wrote that
“the Christian doctrine of God was becoming inextricably involved in a trinitarian theory, the substance and form of which would have been impossible but for Clement and Origen, whose immaterialist teaching it presupposed.”[19]
Jesuit Roland Teske states that Augustine turned to Manichaeism because he thought that all Christians believed in an anthropomorphic God, which he could not accept on philosophical grounds. Teske reports that Augustine believed that in accepting the Manichee doctrine he was joining a Christian sect which rejected the “anthropomorphic interpretation of the scriptural claim that man was made in the image of God” as taught in Gen. 1:26.[20]
In a footnote to the above statement Teske writes that “prior to Augustine…the Western Church was simply without a concept of God as a spiritual substance.” Augustine apparently believed that the Catholic Church taught that God had a body similar to that of a mortal, and that belief prevented him from seeking truth within the Church.[21] Augustine tells us in another work that it was the preaching of Ambrose of Milan who helped him see that there was another way to view God, which ‘spirituals’ alone could decipher.[22]
What about John 10:30?
John 10:30 was an important scripture in the early debates discussed above.
One author wrote of it:
[John 10:30] was a key verse in the early Trinitarian controversies. On the one extreme, the onarchians (Sabellians) interpreted it to mean "one person", although the "one" is neuter, not masculine. On the other extreme, the Arians interpreted this text, which was often used against them, in terms of moral unity of will. The Protestant commentator Engel, following Augustine, sums up the Orthodox position: "Through the word "are" Sabellius is refuted; through the word one" so is Arius.." [In the Gospel of] John... all these relationships between Father and Son are described in function of the one's dealings with men. It would be up to the work of later theologians to take this gospel material pertaining to the mission of the Son add extra and draw from it a theology of the inner life of the Trinity.[23]
Note that “one” in this verse is neuter, not masculine. In Greek, the masculine would be used to indicate a oneness of person or being, and neuter implies a oneness of purpose. So, read literally the verse merely says that Jesus and the Father are one in purpose or will: only a belief in the Trinity at the outset would lead one to read this as a Trinitarian passage.
Note also that later theologians had to contribute ‘extra’ information to solve the problem. This extra eventually resulted in the Trinitarian formulae of today.
What about 1 John 5:7–8?
1 John 5:7-8 reads:
7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.
These verses are considered to have been added to the Bible text. Said one conservative reference work:
...the acceptance of this verse [i.e. the Johannine comma: 1 John 5:7-8] as genuine breaks almost every major canon of textual [criticism][24]
Historian Paul Johnson notes:
Altogether there are about 4,700 relevant manuscripts, and at least 100,000 quotations or allusions in the early fathers . . .Thus, the Trinitarian texts in the first Epistle of John, which make explicit what other texts merely hint at, originally read simply: 'There are three which bear witness, the spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are one.' This was altered in the fourth century to read: 'There are three which bear witness on earth, the spirit and the water and the blood, and these three are one in Christ Jesus; and there are three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Spirit, and these three are one.'[25]
So, the early Christians never referred to these verses in their writings. The verse in the early Greek manuscripts simply says:
There are three which bear witness, the spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are one.
But, in the 4th century, the verse had words added to it to support the ‘new’ orthodox doctrine of the Trinity:
There are three which bear witness on earth, the spirit and the water and the blood, and these three are one in Christ Jesus; and there are three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Spirit, and these three are one.
Why is 1 John 5:7–8 still in the Bible, then?
The writer Erasmus noted the problem with these verses in the 1500s, and did not include the addition change in his Greek New Testament:
On the basis of the manuscript evidence available to him, Erasmus had eliminated the passage [1 John 5:7] from his first edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516, but had restored it in later editions, responding to a storm of protest and to further textual evidence that was produced—quite literally produced--in support of the text. Luther's translation of the New Testament into German, being based on the 1516 edition of Erasmus, did not contain the passage. Although the weight of textual evidence against it was seemingly overwhelming, the proof it supplied for the Trinity made an attack on its authenticity seemed to be an attack on the dogma [thus orthodoxy sought to wrongly restore the Johannine Comma].[26]
This author explains that people were outraged that the verse was taken out. Erasmus replied that he would include it if they could show him a single Greek manuscript that contained it. Scholars believe that a forgery was produced, and (good to his word) Erasmus included the change in his next editions. People cared more about what their dogma, creeds, and councils had taught than what the word of God actually said. The above author continues:
The most pertinacious and conservative in various communions were still holding out for the authenticity of the "Johannine Comma" in 1 John 5:7, despite all the textual and patristic evidence [evidence from the Early Christian Fathers before Nicea] against it, but there was an all but unanimous consensus among textual critics that it represented a later interpolation.[27]
Many Bible translations today omit this part of the text, since it is not considered to be authentic:
New American Bible:So there are three that testify, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and the three are of one accord.[28]
New American Standard Bible:For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.[29]
New Revised Standard Version: There are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree.[30]
Why, then, was Nicean Trinitarian introduced at all?
Let us return to the second century, when it was first sensed that the formulations of the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers were not sufficient to describe the nature of the divinity. A new way of doing this was attempted. Thus the so-called Monarchian controversy occurred... In addition to the Modalists (such as Sabellius), for whom Christ and the Holy Spirit were modes in which one Godhead appeared, there the Dynamists or Adoptionists, who conceived of Christ either as a man who was raised up by being adopted by God, or as a man filled with God's power.[31]
Simply put, people tried a ‘new’ way of talking about God because of disputes about the nature and mission of Christ. In the LDS view, this is because the loss of revelation to the Apostles (due to the apostasy) meant that Christianity was divided about key issues. No one had a good way to resolve the questions, and so they turned to the best intellectual tools they had—they merged Christian theology with Greek philosophy.
Father Charles Curran, a Roman Catholic priest, said,
We [the Christians] went through the problem of appropriating the word in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries with the great trinitarian and Christalogical councils where we finally came to the conclusion of three persons in God and two natures in Jesus. Many people at the time said, ‘Well, you can’t say that because those words aren’t in the scriptures.’ That’s right, they aren’t in the scriptures, they are borrowed from Greek philosophy, but they are the on-going account of the believing community to understand, appropriate and live the word of God in its own circumstances.[32]
Is modern Trinitarianism all understood in the same sense?
Owen Thomas, a professor of systemic theology, noted that:
...our survey of the history of the [Trinity] doctrine in the text has indicated that there are several doctrines of the trinity: Eastern, Western, social analogy, modal, so forth. There is one doctrine in the sense of the threefold name of God of the rule of faith as found, for example, in the Apostle's Creed. This, however, is not yet a doctrine. It is ambiguous and can be interpreted in a number of ways. There is one doctrine in the sense of the Western formula of "three persons in one substance." However, this formula is also ambiguous if not misleading and can be interpreted in a number of ways. A doctrine of the trinity would presumably be one interpretation of this formula . . . let us assume that the phrase "doctrine of the trinity" in the question refers to any of a number of widely accepted interpretations of the threefold name of God in the role of faith.[33]
So, there is ambiguity and disagreement still. This is not characteristic of revelation, but rather of man’s imperfect intellectual efforts to define God according to philosophical criteria. Proponents of this view have even added text to the Bible and opposed the correcting of such errors when it was discovered.
As one current thinker about the Trinity writes:
The notion that in the Trinity one Person may be the font or source of being or Godhead for another lingered on to be a cause of friction and controversy between the East and the West, and still persists today. The main thesis of these lectures, I have said, is that the act of faith required for acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity is faith that the Divine unity is a dynamic unity actively unifying in the one divine life the lives of the three divine persons. I now wish to add that in this unity there is no room for any trace of subordinationism, and that the thought of the Father as the source or fount of God-head is a relic of pre Christian theology which has not fully assimilated the Christian revelation.[34]
There is no room in his doctrine for ‘subordinationism’, but remember (already quoted above) that: "'Subordinationism', it is true, was pre-Nicean orthodoxy."
It is interesting that ideas that were once perfectly orthodox within early Christianity (like subordinationism) are now classed as “pre-Christian theology” which hasn’t yet “assimilated the Christian revelation”. If anything, this looks like a ‘post-Christian theology’ that has ‘altered the Christian revelation’. This observation is not intended to argue that subordinationism is correct in all particulars, but merely to point out that current creedal ideas are not what all Christians have always believed.
Conclusion
Some modern Christians wish to apply a "doctrinal exclusion" to declare who is or isn't Christian. Such definitions are generally self-serving, and not very helpful. With the Nicene Creed, critics are ironically in the position of using a definition that would exclude all Christians for more than two centuries after Christ from the Christian fold.
Thus the New Testament itself is far from any doctrine of the Trinity or of a triune God who is three co-equal Persons of One Nature.[35]
The New Testament does not contain the developed doctrine of the Trinity.[36]
There is in them [the Apostolic Fathers], of course, no trinitarian doctrine and no awareness of a trinitarian problem."[37]
The Church had to wait for more than three hundred years for a final synthesis, for not until the Council of Constantinople [AD 381] was the formula of one God existing in three coequal Persons formally ratified.[38]
These passages are succinct summaries. If a critic wishes to justify his or her belief in the creedal Trinity, they must rely on tradition and the creeds of the 4th century, and abandon claims of scriptural or historical support for such a belief in early Christianity, including among the apostles and those they taught.
Since the LDS believe in an apostasy from true doctrine, they see the creedal Trinitarianism—which is an admitted novelty in the centuries after Christ—as evidence of it.
Endnotes
1. Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1949), 205, 236.
2. Henry Bettenson, editor and translator, The Early Christian Fathers:A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius, (Oxford University Press: 1969), 239. ISBN 0192830090.
3. RPC Hansen, "The Achievement of Orthodoxy in the Fourth Century AD", in Rowan Williams, editor, The Making of Orthodoxy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 151–152.
4. FL Cross and EA Livingston, editors, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd edition, (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 1319, 1394.
5. RL Richard, "Trinity, Holy", in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols., (New York:McGraw-Hill, 1967) 14:298.
6. JND Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (New York: Harper, 1978), 247–248.
7. IF Bethune-Baker, An Introduction to the Early History of Christian Doctrine, 8th edition, (London: Methuen, 1949), 171. (emphasis added)
8. John Sanders; cited in Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 60.
9. George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), 92.
10. Maurice Wiles, The Making of Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 4, 144.
11. David Noel Freedman, “When God Repents,” in Divine Commitment and Human Obligation: Selected Writings of David Noel Freedman, Volume One: History and Religion (William B. Eerdmans, 1997), 414.
12. P Achtemeier, editor, Harper's Bible Dictionary (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), 1099.
13. RL Richard, "Trinity, Holy", in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols. (New York:McGraw-Hill, 1967), 14:295.
14. Edmund J. Fortman, The Triune God: A Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), 32,35.
15. Edmund J. Fortman, The Triune God: A Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), 14,16, 22-23, 29.
16. J Fitzmyer, Pauline Theology: A Brief Sketch (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey): Prentice-Hall, 1967), 42.
17. Richard P. McBrian, Catholicism (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1980), 347.
18. Robert P. Casey, “Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Platonism,” Harvard Theological Review 18 (1925): 39–101, at page 82, referring to Contra Celsum 7.27, and Commentary on John 13.22.
19. Ibid., 100.
20. Roland Teske, S.J., “Divine Immutability in St. Augustine,” Modern Schoolman 63 (1986): 233–249, at page 236–237.
21. Ibid., 237–238, with notes 25 and 34, citing Confessions 5.10.19 (Pusey translation, page 77).
22. Ibid., 238–239, quoting De beata vita 1.4.
23. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I–XII (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co. Inc.), 403, 407.
24. Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible (Chicago, Moody Press, 1968), 370.
25. Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Touchstone, 1976), 26–27. ISBN 684815036.
26. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 4 : Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (University Of Chicago Press, 1985), 4:346, comments in bracket A1. ISBN 0226653773.
27. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 5 : Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since 1700) (University Of Chicago Press, 1991), 193. ISBN 0226653803.
28. Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, The New American Bible (World Bible Publishers, Iowa Falls, 1991), 1363.
29. New American Standard Bible (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation), 1 John 5:7–8.
30. New Revised Standard Version (Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, 1995), 1 John 5:7–8.
31. Kurt Aland, A History of Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), 1:190.
32. Charles Curran, "Creative Fidelity: Keeping the Religion a Living Tradition," Sunstone (Issue #{{{num}}}) (July 1987): 45. off-site Cited in Robert L. Millet, "Joseph Smith and Modern Mormonism: Orthodoxy, Neoorthodoxy, Tension, and Tradition," Brigham Young University Studies 29:3 (1989): footnote 14.
33. Owen C. Thomas, Theological Questions: Analysis and Argument (Wilton, Conn.: Morehouse-Barlow, 1983), 34.
34. Leonard Hodgson, Doctrine of the Trinity (London: Nisbet & Co. Ltd., 1944), 102.
35. William J. Hill, The Three-Personed God (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 27.
36. New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids MI, Zondervan, 1967), 1:84.
37. JND Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, revised edition, (New York: Harper, 1978), 95.
38. Edmund J. Fortman, The Triune God: A Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), 44.
[In best Bart Simpson voice ...] Oh man, I thought I was gonna have a quiet evening doin’ nothin’ and now I have all this stuff to read through before posting. [Best Dr. Chang kon Jin voice ...] How can I do it?... Oh well, gotta live with it! [He is/was a great oncologist I knew way back when, who would make a long, long golf putt to win a hole and make that sage comment. A Prince of a man, truly.]
Read this letter from him. source
To Timothy Pickering, on a Sermon by Doctor Channing
I THANK you for Mr. Channing's discourse, which you have been so kind as to forward me. It is not yet at hand, but is doubtless on its way. I had, received it through another channel, and read it with high satisfaction. No one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason in its advances toward rational Christianity.When we shall have done away the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three; when we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding, reared to mask from view the simple structure of Jesus; when, in short, we shall have unlearned every-thing which has been taught since his day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines, he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily, his disciples; and my opinion is that if nothing had ever been added to what flowed purely from his lips, the whole world would at this day have been Christian. I know that the case you cite, of Dr. Drake, has been a common one. The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies, and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock reasonable thinkers, to revolt them against the whole, and drive them rashly to pronounce its founder an impostor. Had there never been a commentator, there never would have been an infidel. In the present advance of truth, which we both approve, I do not know that you and I may think alikeon all points. As the Creator has made no two faces alike, so no two minds, and probably no two creeds. We well know that among Unitarians themselves there are strong shades of difference, as between Doctors Price-and Priestley, for example. So there may be peculiarities in your creed and in mine. They are honestly formed without doubt. I do not wish to trouble the world with mine, nor to be troubled for them. These accounts are to be settled only with him who made us; and to him we leave it, with charity for all others, of whom, also, he is the only rightful and competent judge. I have little doubt that the whole of our country will soon be rallied to the unity of the Creator, and, I hope, to the pure doctrines of Jesus also.
In saying to you so much, and without reserve, on a subject on which I never permit myself to go before the public, I know that I am safe against, the infidelities which have so often betrayed my letters to the strictures of those for whom they were not written, and to whom I never meant to commit my peace. To yourself I wish every happiness, and will conclude, as you have done, in the same simple style of antiquity, da operam ut valeas; hoc mihi gratius facere nihil potes. MONTICELLO, 27 February, 1821.
1. Mormon doctrine is wrong, Mormon written scripture is uninspired, and Mormon sacramental practices are over the top.
2. To the extent that anyone truly & biblically believes in the Jesus of the Bible through the words of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James, that person is a saved Christian in my opinion.
“The Bible makes the claim that it is Truth”
The Bible claims to be the word or God, and we Mormons accept that to the extent that it matches with how it was as originaly written. The Bible doesn’t claim to be complete (in fact it references several books of scripture that are now lost to mankind) nor does it claim to be perfectly inerrant in every respect.
http://en.fairmormon.org/index.php/Biblical_completeness
http://en.fairmormon.org/index.php/Biblical_inerrancy
“The Book of Mormon contains many historically impossible claims”
There are many claim in the BoM that have been validated, and there are others for which there currently is no validating evidence, but none of these claims are beyond the realm of what is possible. Arguing against the BoM on the basis of claims that currently don’t have supporting evidence is a logicaly flawed argument, many times claims people pointed to as evidence against it have been later validated by new discoveries.
http://en.fairmormon.org/index.php/Book_of_Mormon_anachronisms
“the reportedly 4000+ revisions that have been made to it since 1830”
These revision are things like standardizing the spelling to modern norms, breaking it into chapters, numbering the verses, and other matters of no consequence. There were a handful of verses that had the wording changed to clarify the intended meaning and these were all done by Joseph Smith who originally translated it.
http://en.fairmormon.org/index.php/Book_of_Mormon_textual_changes
“(F.H.H. Roberts, Jr, Smithsonian Institution, 1951)”
A lot has been found since 1951, but even back then the Smithsonian got it wrong and soon stopped using the statement you quoted.
http://www.jefflindsay.com/BMEvidences.shtml
“From a theological standpoint, Mormonism also claims that
a) God was a man”
And don’t orthodox Christians also believe that God was once a man called Jesus Christ? We believe that Christ was God before, during, and after his mortal life. So experiencing a period of mortality doesn’t have to mean any loss of divinity or godhood.
Now the quote you use talks of Heavenly Father, not Christ who we consider to be a separate being, but that speech was never accepted as doctrine by the Church. It represents the views of the speaker and calling it doctrinal is false and misleading. We have no doctrine that attempts to explain the origin of Heavenly Father.
“b) Mormons will become Gods and populate their own planets with ‘spirit children’.”
We believe in deification as did the early Christians...
Saint Irenaeus
- “Do we cast blame on him [God] because we were not made gods at our beginning, but first we were made men, then, in the end, gods?
- How then will any be a god, if he has not first been made a man?
- Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, of his boundless love, became what we are that he might make us what he himself is.”
(the above quotes taken from: Henry Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius (London: Oxford University Press, 1956)
Clement of Alexandria
- “Yea, I say, the Word of God became a man so that you might learn from a man how to become a god.”
Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks, 1.[
and
- “if one knows himself, he will know God, and knowing God will become like God. . . . His is beauty, true beauty, for it is God, and that man becomes a god, since God wills it.”
Clement of Alexandria, Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, 3.1 see also Clement, Stromateis, 23
Justin Martyr
- “[in the beginning men] were made like God, free from suffering and death,” and that they are thus “deemed worthy of becoming gods and of having power to become sons of the highest”
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 124.
Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria
- “The Word was made flesh in order that we might be enabled to be made gods. . . . Just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are both deified through his flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life.”
Athanasius, Against the Arians, 1.39, 3.39.
and
- “He became man that we might be made divine.”
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54.
Augustine of Hippo
- “But he himself that justifies also deifies, for by justifying he makes sons of God. ‘For he has given them power to become the sons of God’ [John 1:12]. If then we have been made sons of god, we have also been made gods.”
Augustine, On the Psalms, 50:2.
Then you have more modern theologians teaching the same idea and acknowledging deification was part of early Christianity...
C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.”
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were “gods” and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him-for we can prevent Him, if we choose-He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said”
Westminister Dictionary of Christian Theology:
Deification (Greek Theosis) is for orthodoxy the goal of every Christian. Man, according to the Bible, is ‘made in the image and likeness of God’...it is possible for man to become like God, to become deified, to become God by grace. This doctrine is based on many passages of both O.T. and N.T. (Psalms 82: (81) .6; 2 Peter 1:4), and it is essentially the teaching both of St. Paul, though he tends to use the language of filial adoption (Romans 8:9-17, Galatians 4:5-7) and the fourth gospel (John 17:21-23).
William R. Inge, Archbishop of Canterbury:
“God became man, that we might become God” was a commonplace of doctrinal theology at least until the time of Augustine, and that “deification holds a very large place in the writings of the fathers...We find it in Irenaeus as well as in Clement, in Athanasius as well in Gregory of Nysee. St. Augustine was no more afraid of deificari in Latin than Origen of apotheosis in Greek...To modern ears the word deification sounds not only strange but arrogant and shocking.
If you want to get the full reference for the quotes, they are at http://fairwiki.org/index.php/Deification_of_man
As for having your own planet, that isn’t doctrine and again you reference non-doctrinal sources.
“Other noteworthy areas include a view of being Black as punishment for earlier spiritual neutrality on another world”
Also was never our doctrine. Comb through the personal opinions of any clergyman from 200 years ago and you’ll find something to complain about. Back then it wasn’t uncommon for orthodox minsiters to question if blacks had a soul, and if so could it be saved.
“a view that Christ’s sacrifice was not fully sufficient for salvation”
Why did Christ and the apostles teach people to repent, to be baptized, to obey the commandments? If Christ’s sacrifice was fully sufficient those are not needed, so why bother teaching them?
Also, Christ said there was a sin a person would not be forgiven of, blasphemy against the Holy Ghost.
“and that Satan, demons and Christ are actually all ‘spirit brothers’.”
Along with all of humanity too. Heavenly Father is the father of all spirits (Heb 12:9), if not so, where did they come from? Some of Heavenly Father’s children are obedient, some are rebellious. Lucifer chose to rebel and became Satan.
“I do not seek to defame or slander Mormonism in any way”
I certainly hope so. There is a lot of misinformation around about us. I hope you will take what I said here into account in any future posts.
“There are far too many differences between Mormonism and what is taught to us by Jesus Christ.”
There are many differences between Mormonism and what YOU HAVE BEEN TAUGHT about Christ’s gospel.
You believe in certain doctrines so when you read the Bible you interpret it through that lens. Our teachings are inconsistent with your interpretations of the scriptures, but they are not inconsistent with how we see the scriptures. Likewise your teachings are not consistent with our interpretations. Who is to say who interprets correctly? I say a person should go to God in prayer and find out directly from Him rather than rely on man’s wisdom.
Mormonism is not a rejection of the Bible or of Christ, it is a rejection of the interpretations of men.
Yawn, more sneer and smear. The gnashing of your teeth is like music to my ears.
The foundations of Mormonism are lies and fabrication that have been proven fabrications from imagination of one Joseph Smith. The book of mormon can not stand up against archaeology or genetics. The book of abraham is clearly a complete imagination from Smith’s mind completely divergent from the real alphabet of hieroglyphics. Joe Smith’s ‘translation’ of the King James Bible is an absolute fabrication with no manuscripts to back his specious additions to the Bible. Smith was an adulterer who lied to his congregation regarding his multiple wives. You seriously want to defend this man as a prophet of God?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.