What I'm disappointed about is that you didn't even try to defend your position. You have put a lot of stock in the whole Trinity argument, & yet when confronted, you simply divert to another question rather than defend your beliefs. You & the rest of the cabal constantly ask us to defend our beliefs, & we do, largely b/c we believe in these things.
Am I to surmise that defense of one's beliefs is only a one way street in your eyes? As a Christian, I would think you would want to defend those beliefs, rather than just divert to another question. Again, not trying to pound you unnecessarily, just giving food for thought. Your snide remarks about our beliefs has left you somewhat open to charges of hypocrisy.
In answer to your question, we believe in the Godhead that comprises God the Father, our Savior Jesus Christ, & the Holy Ghost. Three separate & distinct members of the Godhead as spoken of in the Bible. Thus, Christ is Deity. Hope that answers your question. Have a good one today my FRiend.
LOL
(Coco chanelling Elsie’s Mormon dude)
A Bible? A Bible? you say! Yeah, defend yourself ejonsie22...
Our prophet Joseph said this, and HE is a true Prophet of God!, prove it’s not true:
Joseph Smith said there were many Gods
“Hence, the doctrine of a plurality of Gods is as prominent in the Bible as any other doctrine. It is all over the face of the Bible . . . Paul says there are Gods many and Lords many . . . but to us there is but one God–that is pertaining to us; and he is in all and through all”
Am I to surmise that defense of one's beliefs is only a one way street in your eyes? As a Christian, I would think you would want to defend those beliefs, rather than just divert to another question. Again, not trying to pound you unnecessarily, just giving food for thought. Your snide remarks about our beliefs has left you somewhat open to charges of hypocrisy.
Nothing "snide" about that remark.
You & the rest of the cabal constantly ask us to defend our beliefs, & we do, largely b/c we believe in these things.
As a Christian, I can remind you that we have defended our beliefs many times.This subject was discussed at length in the thread "Why so many LDS threads" and in particular in this post:
Godzilla is unable to post today, so I am furnishing an excerpt from his well-researched post for him.
:
This is specifically not true. Arius became the champion, but the philosophy can "belief in a physical God and and separate physical Christ can be traced back much farther, all the way to Genesis, here we already quoted this scripture here Genesis 3: 4-5 First, that is not recognized by historical accounts – even your favorite wiki. Second, Arius never taught that God had a literal, physical body- period. As far as Gen 3 goes, that was shown not to support mormon polytheism and definitely not Arianism. It is well supported that Arius obtained his philosophy from Plato – and other Hellenistic influences.
God knows you will be as the Gods? What gibberish, ….
Yep you are speaking gibberish. Come up with something coherent next time.
LOL! So in order for us to conflict which of us has to be older? (This argument is nonsense) Trinitarianism as a doctrine of the church started in AD 325, elements of the belief existed long before that but it was not the doctrine of the church.
As I listed, trinitarism was present and taught from Christ on. It was spoken of by name by at least 180. Considering that Arius was a new comer in 325, it is correct to say that Arius was the challenger.
On my Page, there is a section on Hippolytus. Hippolytus was according to Esubious, Constantine's Scribe, the foremost theologian in the church. Hippolytus is supposed to be the great grandson of John the Beloved, and he wrote several works for the Church, one of which is a ten volume set called a refutation of all heresies. Book 4 ( Against one Noetus) is a refutation of the Doctrine of Odalisques that had been popular, The logic and scriptures used by Hippolytus would have destroyed Trinitarinism, had it existed, here let me quote:
Sure, lets take a look at it. (again)
This person was greatly puffed up and inflated with pride, being inspired by the conceit of a strange spirit. He alleged that Christ was the Father Himself, and that the Father Himself was born, and suffered, and died. You see what pride of heart and what a strange inflated spirit had insinuated themselves into him. Froth his other actions, then, the proof is already given us that he spoke not with a pure spirit; for he who blasphemes against the Holy Ghost is cast out from the holy inheritance.
So, God the father is not Jesus Christ, they are not the same person, substance, whatever.
Ummmm, DU, Hippolytus was summarizing the teachings of Odalisques, not presenting the doctrine of the trinity. Contexturally challenged by the passage I see. Here let me help you out to see that a singular God with three Persons was expressed
"Against the Heresy of One Noetus", Section 14:
And the blessed John, in the testimony of his Gospel, gives us an account of this economy (disposition) and acknowledges this Word as God, when he says, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
If, then, the Word was with God, and was also God, who follows? Would one say that he speaks of two Gods? I shall not indeed speak of two Gods, but of one; of two Persons however, and of a third economy (disposition), viz., the grace of the Holy Ghost.
…for it is through the Trinity that the Father is glorified. For the Father willed, the Son did, the Spirit manifested. The whole Scriptures, then, proclaim this truth.
Doesn’t really sound like Hippolytus knocks the doctrine of the Trinity out of the ball park so far.
Then there is the summation of Book X (yes I read all that I could find in the Catholic Encyclopedia on line of Hippolytus' works) Book X I like to quote this because as a summation, it contains most of the plan of salvation as taught by the LDS church, including the deification of man.
"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. 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, 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's 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 scum 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: 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. 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 retrace with all speed your steps. For Christ is the God above all, and He has arranged to wash away sin from human beings, 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 is 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 divine perfection; having made you even God unto His glory!"
I retained the whole passage because these couple of paragraphs are found at the end of Book X, indicating that there is a vast amount of material DU expects you not to read (in addition to other writings) which sheds light on DU’s triumph (in his mind) as proof of the mormon doctrine of deification of man. But before we go there, earlier in the same book, Hippolytus makes another Trinitarian statement :
The Logos alone of this God is from God himself; wherefore also the Logos is God, being the substance of God.
Regarding the inference that man may become gods – there is a general principle that the text should stand on its own with the intent of the author intact and not to superimpose meanings the author never intended to be used. This is what DU is doing on this isolated section of Book X. Here is a component understood by the Eastern Orthodox Church (and to a lesser degree the rest of Christianity) as theosis. This doctrine must not be thought of in a "Mormon" way, as if men become little gods with their own planets, but must be understood as a true deification of man and as an intimate communion of man with God in Christ. It must never be reduced to a mere metaphor, because by his incorporation into Christ, man is really made a partaker of the divine nature. [cf., 2nd Peter 1:4] This does not involve a change in man's essence, but entails an indwelling of God's Spirit within the human person, enlivening both body and soul to everlasting life. ….. The Fathers of the Church are insistent that deified man's participation in the divine nature does not mean that he participates in either the divine essence (ousia), which is and remains wholly incommunicable and incomprehensible, nor in the personal (hypostatic) reality of any one of the three divine persons, because personality is not something that can be communicated or imparted from one person to another. The divine essence, and the personal subsistent (hypostatic) reality of the three divine persons, are utterly transcendent and incommunicable properties of God. So man is not absorbed by an essential participation in the divine nature, nor are human persons added to the Trinity; instead, through the process of deification (theosis) man participates in the uncreated divine energies (energia) which flow out from the divine essence as a gift to man from the three divine persons. In other words, by a completely unmerited gift of grace, man is elevated to a participation in the divine nature through the uncreated divine energies (energia), and this involves no essential change, nor personal (hypostatic) addition, to either God or man; instead, it entails an abiding communion (koinonia) of life and love between the Trinity and humanity. (http://www.geocities.com/apotheoun/theosis)
So between the time that Hippolytus died in 236 and the Council at Nicea in 325 AD the view of the church swung from three entities acting as one God to one God made up of three manifestations. This is really not a HUGE change when you think about it, but it has many important ramifications.
Well, considering that the first citation was not Hippolytus’ doctrinal statement, but that of the heritic Odalisques, one leg of DU’s tripod is broken. In Against the Heresy of One Noetus the word Trinity is used in common Trinitarian manner. The Trinitarian presentation is also present in Book X with the mention of theosis. Not very big ramifications, only poorly read documents.
Since Hippolytus was speaking here as the voice of the church, and the doctrine he is writing here is definitely not "Trinitarian", the Doctrine of the Trinity came later to the Church.
It is worth repeating here Against the Heresy of One Noetus …for it is through the Trinity that the Father is glorified. For the Father willed, the Son did, the Spirit manifested. The whole Scriptures, then, proclaim this truth.
This reflects the fact that the whole Scriptures support this. Since you don’t believe the bible, and believe the lie that Trinity wasn’t taught until 4th century. I will expose that lie. In addition to Hipplytus -
70 AD: The Didache
"After the foregoing instructions, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living [running] water…. If you have neither, pour water three times on the head, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." (Didache 7:1 [A.D. 70]).
Ignatius of Antioch (c 107) writes the following:
There is then one God and Father, and not two or three; One who is; and there is no other besides Him, the only true [God[. For the "Lord thy God," saith [the Scripture], "is one Lord." And again, "Hath not one God created us? Have we not all one Father?" And the is also one Son, God the Word.
….
There are not then either three Fathers, or three Sons, or three Paracletes, but one Father, and one Son, and one Paraclete. Wherefore also the Lord, when He sent forth the apostles to make disciples of all nations, commanded them to "baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," not unto one [person] having three names, nor into three [persons] who became incarnate, but into three posessed of equal honor.
Letter the the Philippians, Ch II
140 AD Aristides "[Christians] are they who, above every people of the Earth, have found the truth, for they acknowledge God, the creator and maker of all things, in the only-begotten Son and in the Holy Spirit" (Apology 16).
150 AD Polycarp of Smyrna "I praise you for all things, I bless you, I glorify you, along with the everlasting and heavenly Jesus Christ, your beloved Son, with whom, to you and the Holy Spirit, be glory both now and to all coming ages. Amen" (Martyrdom of Polycarp 14).
170 AD Tatian the Syrian "We are not playing the fool, you Greeks, nor do we talk nonsense, when we report that God was born in the form of a man" (Address to the Greeks 21).
Theopholis, who was Bishop of Antioch (AD168 to AD181) uses the actual word "Trinity" in "To Autolycus" (Book II, Chapt 15). "In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity, of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. "
177 AD Athenagoras "The Son of God is the Word of the Father in thought and actuality. By him and through him all things were made, the Father and the Son being one. Since the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son by the unity and power of the Spirit, the Mind and Word of the Father is the Son of God. And if, in your exceedingly great wisdom, it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by `the Son,' I will tell you briefly: He is the first- begotten of the Father, not as having been produced, for from the beginning God had the Word in himself, God being eternal mind and eternally rational, but as coming forth to be the model and energizing force of all material things" (Plea for the Christians 10:2-4).
177 AD Melito of Sardis "It is no way necessary in dealing with persons of intelligence to adduce the actions of Christ after his baptism as proof that his soul and his body, his human nature, were like ours, real and not phantasmal. The activities of Christ after his baptism, and especially his miracles, gave indication and assurance to the world of the deity hidden in his flesh. Being God and likewise perfect man, he gave positive indications of his two natures: of his deity, by the miracles during the three years following after his baptism, of his humanity, in the thirty years which came before his baptism, during which, by reason of his condition according to the flesh, he concealed the signs of his deity, although he was the true God existing before the ages" (Fragment in Anastasius of Sinai's The Guide 13).
Clement of Alexandria (150 – 216) argues that Plato had known (in a way) of the Trinity:
And the address in the 'Timeaus' calls the creator, Father, speaking this "Ye gods of gods, of whom I am Father; and the Creator of you works." So that when he says, "Around the king of all, all things are, and because of Him are all thing; and he is the cause of all good things; and around the second are the things of the second in order and around the things of the thrid, the third," I understand nothing else that the Holy Trinity to be meant; for the third is the Holy Spirit, and the Son is the second, by whom all things were made according to the will of the Father.
Clement, Stromata, Book V. Ch XIV
Here's a quote from Tertullian (155-250)
What, now (has this to do) with the Church, and your (church) indeed, Psychic? For, in accordance with the person of Peter, it is to spiritual men that this power will correspondently appertain, either to an apostle or else to a prophet. For the very Church itself is, properly and principally, the Spirit Himself [ie the Godhead], in whom is the Trinity of One Divinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Tertullian, on Modesty, ch XXI
Now DU are you going to continue the lie that the Trinity was not taught until the fourth century?
The Bible itself disagrees with Trinitarian definitions in so many places, whole new interpretations of the meanings of words have been invented to try to make this inherently incompatible creed fit with a gospel it is diametrically opposed to. Now before you go and fire off another impassioned response, consider that you are the one decrying the Heart and check your emotions at the door, if you can, you will find my words here most logical.
When compared to mormon presentation of a polytheistic pantheon that is clearly rebuked by the bible, I have no need for emotions (and even standing on its own). Your ‘inventions’ are inventions themselves as Paul said in Romans 1 – you want to make god into your own image. Since you cannot refute the passages in Isaiah regarding the singularity of God, yet the bible recognizes the Father, Son and Spirit all being called God – the Trinity is a very logical and compatible doctrine. Does that mean we know all there is to know – clearly no – else we would be God. But this lack of total knowledge is not excuse for twisted and misrepresented statements of the ANF and the Bible.
Be that as it may I will bite just a little. The oldest of Christian traditions, Eastern/Greek Orthodoxy, of which I am an adherent though due to geography I practice in a Methodist church, has the best answer and one shared among many others. The Trinity itself is easy to understand to a certain extent, but it has elements that like many things of God are beyond our understanding. The entire thing is based on the very simple and obvious fact there is only one God. That is an immutable point from the scriptures. There are three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and they share one essence. Therefore that are one in the Spirit. Like the tradition we have in the Marriage ceremony, where two become one, the husband and wive are individuals but share one heart, one spirit.
See it is really not hard, and it is indicated through out the bible, but one has to answer the questions I presented so i shall do so again since they remain unanswered despite your current post.
I will simplify them even further;
Is there more than one God? yes or No
Is Jesus a Deity? yes or no
And lest I forget like I did last time, to get an answer to the “us’ comments
Who are the heavenly hosts?
I think you may have misaddressed this.
Looks like something for DL to answer.