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."
I'll engage you on works righteousness. Go ahead and make your case.
I'll engage you on works righteousness. Go ahead and make your case.
In effect, Joseph Smith was calling Jesus a failure, as witnessed by Smith's arogant boasting statement thusly:
I have more to boast of than any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such work as I (History of the Church, Vol.6, pp. 408-09).
Jesus, Paul, Peter and John were all failures, whereas Joseph Smith was not, at least in his deluded mind.
Wrong. Many claim to be Christian, Mormonism among them, yet have a false and confused concept of the Person of Christ.
Biblical, historic Christian affirms the teaching of the Bible, Jesus Christ Himself, the Apostles and the Church that Jesus Christ is Eternally Divine, and not a created being as is believed, taught and preached by Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses and all other forms of Arianism and Gnosticism.
placemarker
placemarker
If Christianity is what it purports to be... from God and not man. Then the same Holy Spirit was at work in both the early church and in modern believers.
You claim to base things upon God, yet you keep returning to the teachings of men. Whether these be early Christians or your own Mormon councils who take on the name of 'apostle', or the dictionary (emphatic point... the dictionary does not define Christianity, only how the term is used by the world). God clearly tells us how his prophets will be identified. If Joseph Smith does not fit those words from God, is it twisting to say so truthfully?
I don't have the time (though I wish I did), to go fully into the beliefs of the early church, and which were considered heretical or orthodox (though these terms are usually defined in terms of the teachings of the Catholic church, and not, as I would argue, upon what is put forth in scripture). I can refer you to the "Apostolic Tradition" of Hippolytus which clearly elaborates a very Trinitarian understanding of God. We can say though, that the early church struggled with the exact relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. This is entirely appropriate since the Bible does not make definitive statements about the 'how' of the Trinity, but does present God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as 'people' to be worshipped and prayed to, and affirms that there is only One God. You seem to be using 'Trinity' in a sense other than that all three are persons, and yet are God.
Yet, again, it is not any man which defines God, but God himself through His word. I merely post this rather limited text to counter the rather biased statements you are making on early church beliefs. With respect, I will leave it to more learned men to refute or amplify that in detail. Outside of some pleasure reading, I'm afraid I slept through most discourses on the early church.
I do not say this as an attack on you. I am sure that you try to be correct in your statements. But in your desire to 'prove Mormonism' you are accepting anything which supports your premise, rather (I would argue) than letting the evidence lead to the conclusion. This is not to say that Christians do not do this at times, but rather that God is a God of Truth, and we do not need to defend Him from what is truthful.
You claim that Christian interpretations are incorrect and not scriptural. On the priesthood of all believers, I can only direct you back to scripture, to let it speak for itself.
As you come to him, the living Stone- rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him- you also , like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Pe 2:4-5)
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1Ti 2:5) (to show that no 'priest' is necessary between a man and God, since we now through Christ, all have the ability to come before Him.)
with your blood, you have purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth. (Rev 5:9b-10)
Remember also, that when Christ was crucified, the curtain in the temple was torn in two (Lk 23:45). That curtain was what separated the ‘laity’ from the area reserved for priests. Though Christ we are able to come before God as righteous, we are able to offer spiritual sacrifices to him, we are commanded to speak of God to all the nations, we are able to petition and speak to him as dearly loved children. We have the duties of priests, because we are priests.
It is God’s Word that judges us, not we who judge God. If God sends a true prophet among us, it is God who chooses the prophet and gives him true words to speak. It is not men or any council of men to judge God. When the Master of the vineyard sends his servants to collect what is due to him, it is not the tenants who give the servant authority. When the Master of the vineyard sent his last messenger, His Son (Mt 21:37), those that rejected God fulfilled what prophets before them had foretold, and they crucified Him.
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1Pe 4:9)
I do not lay before you the teachings of men, but what God has clearly given us. It is upon you to accept it and serve God, or to reject it and follow your own gods.
Ping to post 607.
It seems to have relevance to some of your discussions.
And from my POV, it is orthodox Christianity that has a false and confused concept of the Godhead. That doesn't make either of us non-Christian however. Grab a dictionary and look it up, there is no requirement to accept orthodox doctrines beyond an acceptance of Christ as Savior and Son of God.
"Biblical, historic Christian affirms the teaching of the Bible"
What was the orthodox view in the 4th century was not the orthodox view of the 1st century. The whole idea of the trinity evolved over time and relies on concepts of Greek philosophy not found anywhere in the Bible.
From http://fairwiki.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.
“If Christianity is what it purports to be... from God and not man. Then the same Holy Spirit was at work in both the early church and in modern believers.”
Only if the church stayed true to the gospel, which we don’t believe to be the case. Even so there is no ‘priesthood of all believers’, in fact we see the Bible as teaching the contrary Heb. 5: 4, Acts 19:13-15. If you are not ordained by one having authority, you have no authority.
“You claim to base things upon God, yet you keep returning to the teachings of men.”
Men who were and are apostles and prophets of God.
“(emphatic point... the dictionary does not define Christianity, only how the term is used by the world)”
Words have meanings, the dictionary is the authority on what words mean. Without a standard like that communication would be meaningless with everyone free to apply their own definitions to whatever word they want. Calling Mormons non-Christians is factualy incorrect. If you want to accuratly draw the line between your faith and mine, you can say Mormons are not orthodox Christians. If you don’t like that, you are free to try and convince every dictionary in the world to ‘fix’ their definition.
“We can say though, that the early church struggled with the exact relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. This is entirely appropriate since the Bible does not make definitive statements about the ‘how’ of the Trinity, but does present God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as ‘people’ to be worshipped and prayed to, and affirms that there is only One God. You seem to be using ‘Trinity’ in a sense other than that all three are persons, and yet are God.”
The church struggled with it then centuries after Christ and without revelation cooked up a compromise doctrine contrary to what was orthodox in the days of the apostles. We belive the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are three persons, we belive they are one God, but the creeds that define the trinity assert they are three person in one being, of one substance, and that is not the kind of ‘oneness’ clearly taught in John 17. See the article I posted in #610.
“But in your desire to ‘prove Mormonism’”
You mistake my intentions. I leave it to the Holy Ghost to prove it to anyone sincerely seeking to know if it is true or not. I am only trying to ensure you have an accurate understanding of what we believe, and why we believe it, and to refute false accusations.
(1 Pe 2:4-5) - nothing there indicates a priesthood of all believers, just the existence of a priesthood.
“(1Ti 2:5) (to show that no ‘priest’ is necessary between a man and God, since we now through Christ, all have the ability to come before Him.)”
Who said the role of a priest was to stand between man and God? You are reading things into these verses that are just not in the text.
(Rev 5:9b-10) - again nothing about a priesthood of all belivers, you read that into the text.
“Remember also, that when Christ was crucified, the curtain in the temple was torn in two (Lk 23:45).”
And nowhere in the scriptures does it say what that means. How do you know you interpret the meaning of it correctly?
“If God sends a true prophet among us, it is God who chooses the prophet and gives him true words to speak.”
And that is what happened, God appeared to Joseph Smith and called him to be a prophet.
“When the Master of the vineyard sends his servants to collect what is due to him, it is not the tenants who give the servant authority.”
I agree, and teaching a ‘priesthood of all believers’ says tenants have authority just because they are in the vineyard.
“I do not lay before you the teachings of men, but what God has clearly given us.”
What you do is take the word of God and read into it things it doesn’t say. I reject your interpretations, not the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob.
Yeah!!!
THAT oughtta keep ‘em busy a while!
—MormonDude(Ya gotta just LOVE all the footnoted references that point to what MEN think!)
55 to go!
Excellent point in an excellent post. Thank you.
To support the Scriptural teaching on a priesthood of all believers, I posted:
As you come to him, the living Stone- rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him- you also , like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Pe 2:4-5)
(Grig replied)- nothing there indicates a priesthood of all believers, just the existence of a priesthood.
(My comment on this) Peter is addressing “God’s elect, strangers in the world” (1Pe 1:1b), who have been given “new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (ibid 1:3b). Peter is clearly addressing all those who have come to Christ throughout these passages. He tells them that they are all to be a holy priesthood... thus a priesthood of all believers.
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1Ti 2:5) (to show that no ‘priest’ is necessary between a man and God, since we now through Christ, all have the ability to come before Him.)
(Grig replied) Who said the role of a priest was to stand between man and God? You are reading things into these verses that are just not in the text.
(My comment to this) In the Old Testament, we are told that among the roles of the priest were to offer up sacrifices of atonement (see Leviticus) and to teach the Law to the people of Israel . They thus stood between men and God, acting as mediators. That is why this passage says there is now only ‘one mediator between God and men’, in contrast to what existed before. I am reading into scripture what scripture informs us.
with your blood, you have purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth. (Rev 5:9b-10)
(Grig replied) - again nothing about a priesthood of all believers, you read that into the text.
(My comment on this) ”With your blood, you have purchased men for God from every tribe”. This clearly refers to all those who have been saved through calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus. It goes on that these people (“them”… all who have been purchased through Christ’s blood) have been made into “priests to serve our God”. All believers into a priesthood… the priesthood of all believers. I read what the text clearly says to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1Pe 4:9)
(Grig did not comment on this text)
(Grig comments) there is no ‘priesthood of all believers’, in fact we see the Bible as teaching the contrary Heb. 5: 4, Acts 19:13-15. If you are not ordained by one having authority, you have no authority.
(My comment on this) No one takes this honor upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was. (He 5:4)
This passage talks of Christ in His role as High Priest, but if you choose to extend its meaning even to the priesthood of all believers, they too do not take the honor upon themselves, but are “called (by God) to belong to Jesus Christ” (Ro 1:6). I’m not sure how in either sense this contradicts the priesthood of all believers.
Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, ‘In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.’ Even sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. One day the evil spirit answered them, ‘Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?’” (Acts 19:13-15)
Again, I’m not sure what relation this has to a priesthood of all who believe in Jesus Christ. These 7 Sons of Sceva were not followers of Christ, but rather attempted to use His name for their own purposes. It is obviously not human ordination or title that grants authority to cast out demons as Paul and other disciples were doing. It is God alone who grants the title of priest. Through Christ He has declared all those who call upon Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to be His priests, and affirms it through the indwelling and authority of the Holy Spirit.
“Remember also, that when Christ was crucified, the curtain in the temple was torn in two (Lk 23:45). That curtain was what separated the ‘laity’ from the area reserved for priests. Though Christ we are able to come before God as righteous, we are able to offer spiritual sacrifices to him, we are commanded to speak of God to all the nations, we are able to petition and speak to him as dearly loved children. We have the duties of priests, because we are priests.”
(Grig replied) And nowhere in the scriptures does it say what that means. How do you know you interpret the meaning of it correctly?
(My comment on this) The curtain will separate the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place (Ex 26:33b)
But only the high priest entered into the inner room (Most Holy Place), and that only once a year , and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still standing. (He 9:7-8)
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most High Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, by his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God (He 10:19-20)
You have repeatedly stated that Christians interpret the Bible incorrectly. Each of your questions on these fairly elemental teachings, I have answered using scripture to explain itself. If Mormonism does not even get these elemental teachings correct, how can you accuse Christians of interpreting incorrectly? It is through the Holy Spirit that God reveals these freely given things to us.
Wonderful! Just wonderful.
Perhaps a review of Hippolytus & his writtings would be helpful. He was certainly not a trinitarian as shown in his writtings, see http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0521.htm. So, what happened between the time Hippolytus died in 236 & 325 AD when the veiw of the church swung from 3 entities acting as one God to one God made up of 3 manifestations?
He also had some very intersting thoughts about the plan of salvation that closely resemble LDS beliefs from “Against one Noetus” book X:
“Such is the true doctrine in regard of the divine nature, O you men, Greeks and Barbarians, Chaldeans and Assyrians, Egyptians and Libyans, Indians and Ethiopians, Celts, and you Latins, who lead armies, and all you that inhabit Europe, and Asia, and Libya.6 And to you I am become an adviser, inasmuch as I am a disciple of the benevolent Logos, and hence humane, in order that you may hasten and by us may be taught who the true God is, and what is His well-ordered creation. Do not devote your attention to the fallacies of artificial discourses, nor the vain promises of plagiarizing heretics,6 but to the venerable simplicity of unassuming truth. And by means of this knowledge you shall escape the approaching threat of the fire of judgment, and the rayless scenery of gloomy Tartarus, where never shines a beam from the irradiating voice of the Word!
You shall escape the boiling flood of hell’s6 eternal lake of fire and the eye ever fixed in menacing glare of fallen angels chained in Tartarus as punishment for their sins; and you shall escape the worm that ceaselessly coils for food around the body whose scum6 has bred it. Now such (torments) as these shall you avoid by being instructed in a knowledge of the true God. And you shall possess an immortal body, even one placed beyond the possibility of corruption, just like the soul. And you shall receive the kingdom of heaven, you who, while you sojourned in this life, knew the Celestial King. And you shall be a companion of the Deity, and a co-heir with Christ, no longer enslaved by lusts or passions, and never again wasted by disease. For you have become God:7 for whatever sufferings you underwent while being a man, these He gave to you, because you were of mortal mould, but whatever it is consistent with God to impart, these God has promised to bestow upon you, because you have been deified, and begotten unto immortality.7 This constitutes the import of the proverb, “Know yourself” i.e., discover God within yourself, for He has formed you after His own image. For with the knowledge of self is conjoined the being an object of God’s knowledge, for you are called by the Deity Himself. Be not therefore inflamed, O you men, with enmity one towards another, nor hesitate to retrace7 with all speed your steps. For Christ is the God above all, and He has arranged to wash away sin from human beings,7 rendering regenerate the old man. And God called man His likeness from the beginning, and has evinced in a figure His love towards you. And provided you obey His solemn injunctions, and becomest a faithful follower of Him who is good, you shall resemble Him, inasmuch as you shall have honour conferred upon you by Him. For the Deity, (by condescension,) does not diminish anything of the divinity of His divine7 perfection; having made you even God unto His glory!7”
Pretty interesting reading. Coupled w/ what Grig has posted, perhaps this isn’t as clear cut as you may have thought. And that’s not just from LDS sources, but Hippolytus, one of the most respected theologians of his time & reportedly the great grandson of John the Beloved.
“So, what happened between the time Hippolytus died in 236 & 325 AD when the veiw of the church swung from 3 entities acting as one God to one God made up of 3 manifestations?”
INDEED Reno! Once you understand what happened in history
and how the Church had to respond to heresy, you will have
your answer. It just won’t be what you want to hear, since
the early Church had to deal with many of the same
heresies that modern day Mormonism, circa 1800’s, espouses.
Solomon said, “There is nothing new under the sun.” This
seems to apply doubly to Satan’s fashion show, the cults.
You see, Mormonism asserts --as its basis for being-- that for the past 1900+ years the promise of Christ, the means of salvation and transformation by the Holy Spirit, has been missing from humanity and in need of restoring with Mormonism. This is why they have baptism for the dead. This is why they continue to post quotes from men in early Christian History they feel contradict Orthodox Christianity. Mormonism apologists are trying to create doubt and division in the minds of those they desire to proselytize.
Mormonism apologsts are all about stealthily calling God a liar and denigrating the means and activity of Salvation for human history prior to Joseph Smith arriving on the scene. If you expect rationalism to come with Momron apologetics, you will be sadly disappointed. They are all about sowing the devil's seeds of doubt in order to direct folks to Mormonism.
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