I said:
"Wrong. Many claim to be Christian, Mormonism among them, yet have a false and confused concept of the Person of Christ."
You replied:
And from my POV, it is orthodox Christianity that has a false and confused concept of the Godhead.
I would expect that to be your point of view, you are a modern day Arian/Gnostic in the garb of Mormonism.
When Jesus asked the disciples, "Who do YOU say that I AM?", it was because many had confused and wrong concepts of His Person. Peter's reply; "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.", that means something, and is defined by the Scriptures in the Bible, not the additional works of Joseph Smith and his plagerized BOM, or other works of fiction such as the Pearl of Great Price.
The Church from the very beginning, starting with the Apostles, believed and taught that Jesus Christ was and IS eternally Divine, co-eternal, co-equally Divine with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and NOT a created being as the Arians and the modern day Arians such as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses falsely believe and preach.
That doesn't make either of us non-Christian however.
Sure it does. To be a Christian means something. One must believe certain things about God, Christ, Salvation, etc. To believe false concepts as Mormonism does of the Person of Christ and the Nature of God is to believe in a false god and false christ who cannot save anyone as that god and christ are immaginary and do not exist.
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.
A dictionary does not define what orthodox Christian beliefs are, the Bible does.
“Firstly, you can cut and paste a huge amount of material like so many do to try to drown an opponent in details all you want,”
It was a factual, well referenced article on the single specific topic we were discussing. It establishes a factual basis for our claims.
“will not deter me from addressing the main points which differentiate Mormonism and counterfeit belief systems from true Biblical Christianity.”
Then address the points in the article, or admit by your avoidance that you can’t.
“You replied: And from my POV, it is orthodox Christianity that has a false and confused concept of the Godhead.
I would expect that to be your point of view,”
Of course, but what makes your POV any better than mine? You can’t just declare yourself right because you believe yourself right.
“When Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do YOU say that I AM?”, it was because many had confused and wrong concepts of His Person. Peter’s reply; “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”, that means something, and is defined by the Scriptures in the Bible,”
And we Mormons agree that Jesus is ‘the Christ, the Son of the Living God’ and that makes us Christians by definition.
“not the additional works of Joseph Smith and his plagerized BOM, or other works of fiction such as the Pearl of Great Price.”
The BoM quotes from the Bible, so what, it represents a rather small part of the whole. The NT quotes from the OT, do you then call the NT plagiarized too? I hold the BoM, D&C and PoGP to also be the word of God, you opinion of them carries no weight with me.
“The Church from the very beginning, starting with the Apostles, believed and taught that Jesus Christ was and IS eternally Divine, co-eternal, co-equally Divine with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and NOT a created being as the Arians and the modern day Arians such as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses falsely believe and preach.”
We believe Christ to be the Jehovah of the Old Testament, he was with the Father in the beginning and at his Father’s direction created the material universe we see around us. He is the Great I AM, the God of Israel. You talk of Christ as ‘begotten, not created’ yet when we say that his spirit was begotten by the Father in the beginning, suddenly you jump around saying we teach a created Christ. I find it hard to take such self contradictory posturing as having any serious merit.
Christ was also pretty clear about the Father being greater than he (John 14: 28), and that he learned and grew and progressed, increasing wisdom in favor with God as he did so (Luke 2: 52), that Christ looked to the Father as his God (John 20: 17) that he was exalted after his resurection (Acts 2:32-33).
I feel the Bible is very clear the Christ is subordinate to the Father, and as demonstrated in the article I posted, subordinationalism was orthodox in the early church, not trinity. When you take all the quotes used to claim that the trinity was taught by the early church, and remove all those that are also consistent with subordinationalism you find nothing specifically for the trinity until around 200AD.
“To be a Christian means something. One must believe certain things about God, Christ, Salvation, etc”
Nope, again check the dictionary. Beyond a belief in Christ there is no other requirement to be a Christian, that is also how the term is generally understood and to use it differently is deceptive. Words mean things, and you don’t get to pick the meaning.
“A dictionary does not define what orthodox Christian beliefs are, the Bible does”
First, we don’t claim to be orthodox Christians, we claim to be Christians. Call us unorthodox Christians if you want to distance yourself from us in a truthful way.
Second, what is orthodox and what is not is defined by majority opinion, it has nothing to do with being correct. Whatever interpretations theologians come up with that become accepted by the majority are by definition orthodox. It was once orthodox that the world was flat and the sun went around it. Men interpreted the Bible to justify it, they persecuted someone with proof to the contrary, and they were wrong. They are also wrong about some things that are still part of orthodox Christianity today.