Posted on 09/06/2010 1:57:21 PM PDT by restornu
Excerpt
Question
Some of my non-LDS Christian friends have told meResponse
Almost invariably when someone claims Mormons are polytheists, they are not seeking a clear explanation of Mormon thought on the nature of God, but are simply using a word with negative connotations in our religious culture as a club to intimidate or confuse others.
Consider, for example, a conversation that Evangelical Christian author Richard Abanes, in his book Becoming Gods (pp. 107-8), claims to have had with a LDS bishop:
Abanes: "Don't you believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?"
Bishop: "We certainly do, and they are one God."
Abanes: "Don't you believe the Father is a god?"
Bishop: "Yes, of course."
Abanes: "And the Son is a god?"
Bishop: "Yes"
Abanes: "And the Holy Ghost is a god."
Bishop: "Yes"
Abanes: "That's three gods."
Bishop: "No, they're one God."
The author goes on to describe that he felt he had entered some sort of Twilight Zone scenario, and goes on to declare all Mormons "polytheists." Yet, any Latter-day Saint, upon reading the conversation outlined above, would recognize the creation of a simplified version, or "strawman," of LDS belief.
One might also seriously consider how an Evangelical Christian would answer these same questions. The reality is certainly more complex than the "strawman" above would lead us to believe.
There really is not a single word that adequately captures LDS thought on the nature of God. Pertinent key technical terminology includes the following:
Monotheism (belief that there is only one God)
Tritheism (understanding the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as distinct Gods)
Polytheism (worship of, or belief in, more than one God)
Henotheism (worship of one God without denying the existence of other Gods; also called Monolatry)
Trinitarianism (belief that God consists of three Persons in one substance)
Social Trinitarianism (belief that the oneness of the three Persons is not one of substance but is social in nature [e.g., unity of thought, etc.])
Modalism (belief that there is only one God that does not exist as three separate Persons but rather manifests itself in three different "modes" [i.e., as Father, Son, or Holy Ghost])
Usually the very same people who are pressing the case that Mormons are polytheists are some stripe of Evangelical Christians who claim to be monotheists. But Trinitarians are not Monotheists by definition (just ask a Jew or Muslim).
The facts that the LDS do not believe the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one in substance, and believe in deification/theosis (that humans may eventually become deified and become partakers in the divine nature), has been used to paint Mormons as polytheists.
When we examine the technical terminology above, though, it becomes clear that a key point of demarcation is worship versus acknowledgment of existence.
If members of the Church worshiped an extensive pantheon like the Greeks or Romans, then the label would be appropriate.
In the context of doctrinal differences over the relationship among the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, however, or the doctrine of deification (which is a profoundly Christian doctrine and not just a Mormon one), use of the word "polytheistic" as a pejorative is both inaccurate and inappropriate.
Instead of using a single-word label, one must actually articulate the belief (using fully-developed sentences or paragraphs). The single-word label that will adequately describe the full breadth of LDS thought on the nature of God has yet to be coined.
Are Christians monotheists?
Any discussion with Jews or Muslims will quickly demonstrate no Christian is, strictly speaking, a monotheist.
One of the chief objections by Jews and Muslims is Christians are polytheists. Most brands of Christians insist on the divinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In addition, the very word those who crafted the great ecumenical creeds used to describe the deity of Jesus, his Father and the Holy Spirit is "trinity," meaning three.
Additionally, they insisted the three Persons should not be confounded, as such would be deemed modalism (one of the primary heresies that led to the formation of the ecumenical creeds and various confessions).
Modalism often insists the one God merely appears to us in three different ways (i.e., as Father, Son and Holy Spirit), and this is exactly what the creeds deny.
Human deification and monotheism The New Testament has language indicating human beings can put on the divine nature and be called "gods" (see John 10:33, 34; Ps. 82:6, Deut. 10:17, etc.). They are instructed to become one with Jesus just as he is one with his Father.
The key point is to realize the existence of other beings with godly attributes has no effect on who Latter-day Saints worship. According to Jeff Lindsay, a popular LDS online apologist:
We worship God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ - not glorious angels or Abraham or Moses or John the Baptist, no matter how great they may be in the kingdom of heaven as sons of God who have become "like Christ" (1 John 3:2).
The only reasonable definition of polytheism requires that plural gods be worshiped - but the beings that Christ calls "gods" are not who we worship at all. In terms of worship, we are properly called monotheists.[1] Additionally, there is abundant evidence of deification being taught by various commonly accepted Christians.
If belief in theosis makes one a polytheist, many Christians would have to be so labeled - including such figures as C. S. Lewis and John Calvin. Clearly, this is not the way in which the term "polytheist" is normally used, but critics of the Church are often willing to be inconsistent if the Church can be made to look alien or "unchristian."
"Monotheism" is sufficiently broad to include the kind of oneness enjoyed by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as well as that promised to those who become one with them when fully sanctified.
Conclusion Latter-day Saints are not polytheists in any reasonable sense of the term that does not also exclude most other Christians who deny the Modalist heresy. Trying to reduce LDS thought to a simple term or "slogan" in this way distorts LDS doctrine.
The Saints worship one God. There are no competing divinities in whom they put their trust. LDS scripture contains such language (1 Nephi 13:41, 2 Nephi 31:21, Mosiah 15:1-5, Alma 11:26-37, Morm. 7:7, D&C 20:28, Mos. 1:20), but it is qualified in somewhat the same way that Creedal Christians have found a way of saying "three"—as in Trinity—and yet also one.
How's that again? Is it sort of like, "Conservatives are greedy bigots by definition (just ask a liberal)" ???
Where is it written that Jews or Muslims get to decide who is and isn't a monotheist? Monotheism, by definition and etymology, is the belief in one God. The Nicene Creed, which is one of the most concise statements of Trinitarian Christian belief, begins with "I BELIEVE IN ONE GOD ...". Sounds pretty monotheistic to me.
I think when Mormons say this, they mean from the moment of his conception by HF when he had physical sex (using his physical body)with the suddenly-no-longer-virgin Mary.
So *always*, in the same way I say I have *always* been left-handed, or red has *always* been my favorite color.
If you are Mormon, you have to pay him back. If you are Christian, it is paid in full.
In fact our good friend and Mormon apologist Delphi User put it this way...
...Jesus Christ, of course, but he commanded us to do stuff to, so we have to go do it.
CC, when you were a kid, did your mom ever buy tickets to a movie, and then say “hey, clean your room!”. If you didn’t at least make an effort, no reward? yep, Christ asks us to do stuff once we have accepted his offer of atonement, it’s a package deal. Yes, he already paid, but just because your mom had the tickets to the movie doesn’t mean you got to go with a messy room. / poor analogy Delph
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2568105/posts?page=539#539
Mormons even believe that Jesus Christ, Lucifer, and all of us were spirit children of God in the pre-mortal world (Mormon Doctrine, p. 278). Jesus is “the First Spirit Child born to God the Father in Preexistence” (Ibid. p.28)
“I was talking about the your statement “but earned godhood by the way he lived” that is an out right distortion.”
This statement sounds awfully antagonistic and confrontational...
jes’ sayin’
I am not trying to demote Jesus Christ. The Mormon view of Jesus demotes Jesus Christ. By their own words by their own church leaders that I have reprinted here.
***
There no where in the LDS standard works where Jesus is demoted!
I can have an opinion but it is still my opinion The GA to can have opinions in trying to communicate but it is not scripture.
Mormons even believe that Jesus Christ, Lucifer, and all of us were spirit children of God in the pre-mortal world
But none of them or us were the only begotten Son of God!
That’s what a FORMER HUMAN would do I guess.
Fine, but I would guess that in a match up between you and the Mormon Apostles I quoted,
One, they would say their view is not just ‘opinion’ but fact, and
Two, since they are the spiritual head of the Mormon church, other Mormons are msot likely going to believe what THEY believe and teach over your one-person opinion.
And yet if you ask them if Jesus and Satan are brothers, they get all defensive and offended. The "truth" is ugly, ain't it?
Resty: But none of them or us were the only begotten Son of God!
Well, not to (ahem) PROVOKE you, but I disagree. I believe Jesus is the only son of God.
Satan is a fallen angel, and angels are an order if beings completely seperate from humans with no means of redemption
Humans had no preexistence and are lost unless they become adopted children of God. Lost = hell. Our default destination is hell. We have to CHOOSE not to go there.
*She who must not be named
But is not the heavenly father the father of all the spirit children? So did he commit incest with Mary ?
I’m always amazed how the truths other rail against us over were taught by their own early leaders...
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?’
(Against Heresies 4, 38)
- How then will any be a god, if he has not first been made a man?
(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)
- 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.”
(Against Heresies 5, preface)
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.
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.
Excellent. I was going to bed, but I noticed your ping on this.
Well written. Are you the author?
Few Christians understand their own theology. Jews and Muslims often attack the Trinity as polytheistic.
Interesting article and I remember reading it when you first posted it.
I wouldn’t call it dispassionate, although he tenders a few olive branches to the LDS.
One issue is the intellectual tradition of Christianity includes the destruction by death heretical thinkers it isn’t as much of an intellectual tradition as a tyrannical one.
Since shortly after the days of Adam the Church has been in the minority of world religions.
Question, then, Resty: Does this mean you or other Lds don't worship Jesus? ('Cause it seems when I read the rest of the article you posted -- like the last graph below -- it says Lds worship only one god...and earlier in the article it said Lds worship the Father. If Lds deem Jesus to be "another" god, then I don't understand...
From the article: The Saints worship one God. There are no competing divinities in whom they put their trust. LDS scripture contains such language (1 Nephi 13:41, 2 Nephi 31:21, Mosiah 15:1-5, Alma 11:26-37, Morm. 7:7)
Please note I thought Mormon 7:7, cited by this author, says Lds worship the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?
good stuff thanks for posting
No this is from FAIR an LDS apologist site
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