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To: restornu; Jeff Head
I have no trouble with the word Trinity to describe 3 personages.

Some believe 3 in one substance to me that makes no sense.

What makes NO sense is that only 2 of your religion's 3 PERSONAGES have physical bodies.

Got any MORMON evidence as to WHY that is true??


Jesus Christ is God’s Son, spiritually and physically.

He calls Him Father, He prays to Him.
We are to pray to Him, God the Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, His Son.
God’s voice was heard at Christ’s baptism, coming from Heaven while He was in the water. The Holy Sirit also descended.
Three seperate entities/Gods.

Santorum endorses one-time rival Romney

Thursday, May 10, 2012 12:32:46 AM · 416 of 492
Jeff Head to stpio


261 posted on 01/14/2014 3:19:55 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie

The (at least) Three gods of Mormonism

Mormon scholar Melodie Moench Charles acknowledges that it is difficult to reconcile the teachings regarding God found in the Book of Mormon with the present teachings of the church. She argues, in fact, that at least some of the teachings of the Book of Mormon regarding God go even beyond the orthodox Trinitarian doctrine in emphasizing the oneness of God:

“Recently when I was teaching the Book of Mormon in an adult Sunday school class we discussed Mosiah 15.... I said that I saw no good way to reconcile Abinadadi’s [sic] words with the current Mormon belief that God and his son Jesus Christ are separate and distinct beings. I suggested that perhaps Abinadi’s understanding was incomplete.

“The class response included defenses of revelation and prophets... and accusations that I was crossing the line of propriety and wisdom to suggest that a prophet could teach incorrect doctrines about God. Some people appreciated a public acknowledgment of an obvious difference between Book of Mormon doctrine and current church doctrine. A few friends said things like, ‘I don’t care what they say about you. I’ve wondered about that passage for a long time, and I’m glad somebody pointed out that it’s not what we teach today.’ But many class members thought the lesson inappropriate and upsetting, and soon I was demoted to teaching nursery....

“When we explore what the Book of Mormon says, its christology or doctrines concerning Christ differ from the christology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since at least the 1840s....

“Book of Mormon people asserted that the Father and Christ (and the Holy Ghost) were one God. When Zeezrom asks Amulek, ‘Is there more than one God?’ Amulek, who learned his information from an angel, answers, ‘No’ (Alma 11: 28-29). At least five times in 3 Nephi, Jesus says that he and the Father are one. Emphasizing that oneness with a singular verb, Nephi, Amulek, and Mormon refer to ‘the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, which is one God’ (2 Ne. 31: 21; Alma 11: 44; Morm. 7: 7, emphasis added).

“This is common trinitarian formula....

“In isolation the Book of Mormon’s ‘which is one God’ statements sound like orthodox trinitarianism, but in context they resemble a theology rejected by orthodoxy since at least 215 C.E., the heresy of modalism (also known as Sabellianism). Modalists believed that for God to have three separate identities or personalities compromised the oneness of God. Therefore, as Sabellius taught, ‘there is only one undivided Spirit; the Father is not one thing and the Son another, but... both are one and the same’ (Lonergan 1976, 38). Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three labels for the different functions which the one God performed.... The Book of Mormon often makes no distinction between Christ and God the Father. For example, Jesus in 3 Nephi talked about covenants which his father made with the Israelites, and yet beyond anything he claimed in the New Testament he also claimed that he was the God of Israel who gave them the law and covenanted with them...

“The Book of Mormon melds together the identity and function of Christ and God. Because Book of Mormon authors saw Christ and his Father as one God who manifested himself in different ways, it made no difference whether they called their god the Father or the Son. They taught that Jesus Christ was not only the one who atoned for their sins but was also the god they were to worship. He was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God of Israel and the Book of Mormon people....

“Like the Book of Mormon, Mormonism before 1835 was largely modalistic, making no explicit distinction between the identities of the Father and the Son. Yet Mormonism gradually began to distinguish among different beings in the Godhead. This means the christology of the Book of Mormon differs significantly from the christology of the Mormon church after the 1840s....

“The current theology that most Mormons read back into the Book of Mormon is tritheism: belief in three Gods. Joseph Smith and the church only gradually came to understand the Godhead in this way. When he translated the Book of Mormon, Smith apparently envisioned God as modalists did: he accepted Christ and Christ’s father as one God. In his first written account of his ‘first vision’ in 1832 Smith told of seeing ‘the Lord’ — one being....

“Later, in 1844, Smith said, ‘I have always declared God to be a distinct personage — Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and or Spirit, and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods’... Mormon history does not support Smith’s claim about what he taught earlier. Documents from early Mormonism reflect that Smith went from belief in one god to belief in two and later three gods forming one godhead....

“Book of Mormon theology is generally modalistic. In the Book of Mormon, God and Jesus Christ are not distinct beings.” (New Approaches to the Book of Mormon, 1993, pages 82, 96-99, 103-104, 110)


283 posted on 01/14/2014 6:38:25 AM PST by Tennessee Nana
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