{"id":74760,"date":"2019-06-06T13:56:11","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T19:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=74760"},"modified":"2019-06-06T13:56:11","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T19:56:11","slug":"the-trinity-where-the-disagreement-really-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2019\/06\/the-trinity-where-the-disagreement-really-lies.html","title":{"rendered":"The Trinity: Where the Disagreement Really Lies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"First<\/a>
A 1913 stained glass image of Joseph Smith\u2019s first vision
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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I published the article below in the Deseret News<\/em> on 19 April 2018:<\/p>\n

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A fundamental disagreement between Latter-day Saint Christianity and mainstream Christianity concerns the doctrine of the Trinity. Both outsiders and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> themselves commonly say Mormons<\/a> reject the doctrine.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t quite true, and it\u2019s important to be precise about where the actual disagreement lies.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Traditional mainstream Trinitarianism rests upon five propositions:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. The Father is God.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. The Son is God.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. The Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit) is God.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost is not the Father.<\/span><\/p>\n

5. There is one God, and only one God.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both mainstream Christians and Latter-day Saints accept all five statements. They have little alternative, since all five are clearly scriptural. Take No. 5, for example: \u201cHear, O Israel,\u201d commands\u00a0Deuteronomy 6:4<\/a>, \u201cThe Lord our God is one Lord.\u201d (Compare\u00a0Isaiah 44:6<\/a>;\u00a046:9<\/a>;\u00a0Mark 12:29<\/a>;\u00a0James 2:19<\/a>.) In the New Testament,\u00a01 Corinthians 8:6<\/a>\u00a0also plainly teaches that there is only one God, though it actually seems to distinguish Jesus Christ as the \u201cLord\u201d from that \u201cone God, the Father\u201d \u2014 a formulation that seems more congenial to the Latter-day Saint view than to \u201corthodox\u201d Trinitarianism. (Compare\u00a01 Timothy 2:5<\/a>;\u00a0Moses 1:6<\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Significantly, perhaps the clearest scriptural statements of the oneness of Father, Son and Holy Ghost occur in distinctively Mormon texts (e.g., at\u00a02 Nephi 31:21<\/a>;\u00a0Alma 11:28-29, 44<\/a>;\u00a0Mormon 7:7<\/a>;\u00a0Ether 2:8<\/a>;\u00a0Doctrine and Covenants 20:19, 28<\/a>; compare \u201cThe Testimony of Three Witnesses\u201d). Thus, Latter-day Saint scripture declares there is one and only one God.<\/span><\/p>\n

Neither traditional Christians nor Latter-day Saints deny the deity of the Father, and both proclaim the divinity of the Son of God. (See, for example,\u00a02 Nephi 11:7<\/a>.) Moreover, the divinity of the Holy Ghost, which is affirmed in virtually every mainstream Christian creed, is also repeatedly declared in the distinctively Latter-day Saint scriptural passages cited above.<\/span><\/p>\n

Latter-day Saints and other Christians agree, too, with No. 4, asserting the Father isn\u2019t the Son, the Son isn\u2019t the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost isn\u2019t the Father. The so-called Athanasian Creed \u2014 a document actually dating to the late fifth or early sixth century after Christ and, accordingly, not written by St. Athanasius of Alexandria (d. A.D. 373) \u2014 supplies the standard Western theological language for this when it speaks of worshiping Father, Son and Holy Ghost as one God while, at the same time, not \u201cconfounding the persons.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But surely nobody can accuse Latter-day Saints of \u201cconfounding\u201d them. During his 1820 First Vision, Joseph Smith saw the Father and the Son as distinct individuals. \u201cWhen the light rested upon me,\u201d he recalled in\u00a0Joseph Smith \u2014 History 1:17<\/a>, \u201cI saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other \u2014 This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man\u2019s,\u201d Joseph taught in April 1843, \u201cthe Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit\u201d (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have always,\u201d he said on June 16, 1844, less than two weeks before his assassination, \u201cdeclared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from\u00a0God the Father<\/a>, and that the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods\u201d (History of the Church 6:74).<\/span><\/p>\n

So how is it that mainstream Christians and Latter-day Saints both accept the five propositions that ground the traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity, yet Latter-day Saints reject that traditional doctrine? Clearly, the difference comes down to exactly what each group understands when it asserts, as both groups do, that there is one and only one God.<\/span><\/p>\n

Joseph Smith\u2019s use of the phrase \u201cthree Gods\u201d in his statement from June 1844 is important here. Latter-day Saints and mainstream Christians use the term \u201cone\u201d in dramatically different ways. Mormons insist on perfect divine unity in mind and will; traditional Trinitarianism, drawing a concept from ancient Greek philosophy, adds to that a unity of \u201csubstance.\u201d In an important sense, there is truly only one God. But Father, Son and Holy Ghost are distinct individuals, and Joseph was therefore not afraid, in another sense, to term them three \u201cGods.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Posted from Jerusalem, Israel<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 \u00a0 I published the article below in the Deseret News on 19 April 2018: \u00a0 A fundamental disagreement between Latter-day Saint Christianity and mainstream Christianity concerns the doctrine of the Trinity. Both outsiders and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints themselves commonly say Mormons reject the doctrine. But this isn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Trinity: Where the Disagreement Really Lies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    I published the article below in the Deseret News on 19 April 2018:   A fundamental disagreement between Latter-day Saint Christianity\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2019\/06\/the-trinity-where-the-disagreement-really-lies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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