Heavenly Parents

[RuthAnne]

God is a being with three persons.

Obviously what Mormons believe. And they worship all three of them.

 

[Stephen168]

Obviously what Mormons believe. And they worship all three of them.

What is obvious from this thread, the one from June 2013, and a few others is that Mormons worship a God that is three persons each a separate being. Christians believe in a God of three persons in one being.

 

[RebeccaJ]

RebeccaJ:

Which means, Jesus is not worshipped, per se, but is an intermediary through whom they worship the Father.

They have a song about Jesus where they say “I’ll worship him with all my might.”

That’s not worshipping him?

Mormons do not worship Jesus as Who He Is. God the Son, equal to the Father. One in Being. God from God, Light from Light. They worship their version of Jesus as savior, for fulfilling the purpose they believe the god they call father has for them. They do not worship Jesus as God, or even as a god.

That being said, I know Mormons whose life is spent with a desire to follow Jesus, as they believe is correct. I don’t want anyone to think I am disparaging a desire for Christian discipleship.

Mormonism changes over time. In my lifetime, being raised Mormon, and now looking from the outside, they have moved closer to Trinitarian ideas than they were 40 years ago. The changes in Mormonism to returning closer to Trinitarian teaching is absolutely a good thing, IMO. But they still have a very long way to go. Smith led them very far astray and they are very fixed on him.

That particular Mormon hymn is fairly recent, BTW. They have a lot of newish stuff that is designed towards an effort of, “see how Christian we are”.

Nevertheless, their polytheism remains firmly intact. A Christian says Jesus is God, and we mean the One God of Christianity. In Mormonism Jesus is A god. I’ve never in my life heard a Mormon reference Jesus as God in the same way they reference their Father as God. Coming from a Mormon background, it was a very foreign concept to me to say Jesus IS the One True God. If they are saying it now it’s with a mental image of three gods, who are one in purpose.

Mormons are trying to sound Christian these days, but don’t be fooled. They use the same words and phrases that are familiar to Christians, but have ascribed totally different definitions to them. They still ask questions like, “Was Jesus praying to himself?”, in discussing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. They reject the One God of Christianity, entirely, and then attempt replacement theology, and overlays of Mormon teaching, in hopes of making their rejection look like acceptance.

 

[Stephen168]

19 And gave unto them commandments that they should love and serve him, the only living and true God, and that he should be the only being whom they should worship.

This is talking about God the Father. If you worship Jesus Christ also, then isn’t that two beings?

D&C 20 was written in 1830 when Joseph Smith taught the Trinity. When ‘being’ and ‘person’ had different meanings in Mormonism.

For the record we worship God the Father also as Christ does.

So if I understand, according to your doctrine and covenants you worship only one being but according to your book of Mormon you worship two beings? Which is correct?

Just a little farther in D&C 20:28 it states: Which Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one God , infinite and eternal, without end. As with the Bible, the D&C refers to the three divine beings/persons as “one God”.

D&C 20 was written in 1830 when Joseph Smith taught the Trinity. As a trinitarian verses 19 and 28 would not conflict, but now Mormons use the words being and person with the same meaning. Which put verses 19 and 28 in conflict and do not answer the question. Which is it? Is the Mormon god one being or two? Or three? He never said.

Okay, thank you. This makes more sense now. I have three takeaways from this discussion.

1. Mormons believe in worshipping one being (per d & c)
2. Mormons believe that The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost are one being. (I had mistakenly thought you believed they were separate beings but I stand corrected)
3. Since Mormons believe that The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost are one, and you only worship one being, then you also worship The Holy Ghost.

This makes sense. I can’t wait for the next dinner discussion with my Mormon relatives!

I’m not sure how you got this from gazelam. He said D&C “refers to the three divine beings/persons;” therefore Mormons believe their godhead is three beings. The Father, The Son, and the Holy Ghost are three beings. He said Mormons worship three beings/persons as one godhead. So you were correct when you stated:

I know you believe that they are separate beings.

I’m still trying to sort this out.

If they can only worship the “only being” as it says in their scripture, which being is that?

If The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost are one being, then it would make sense. But that means they worship three Gods.

With verses 19 & 28 in conflict in Mormonism, they have to pick one. As you noticed they both picked 28. They worship three beings.

If they are not one being, then they can only worship one of them.

They said they worship all three beings as one god. But do they worship them equally? Do they pray to all three equally? I’ve been told no they do not.

 

[RebeccaJ]

They said they worship all three beings as one god. But do they worship them equally? Do they pray to all three equally? I’ve been told no they do not.

I think it can be explained in Catholic terms as the worship they give their God the Father is latria. Their Jesus is given hyper-dulia and their Holy Ghost is given dulia. With the understanding, of course, that we would never use dulia and hyper-dulia in describing worship given to the Holy Trinity.

 

[mtolympus]

In June of 2013 in the thread: LDS, Creeds, and the Trinity; this was explained to you in great detail by a few Catholics. This was my only contribution.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)LDS, Creeds, and the Trinity

A person is an individual substance of a rational nature.
A being is anything that is.
A brick is a being and not a person.
A human is a being and one person.
God is a being with three persons.

Yes, I appreciate you explaining this to me in detail. It has helped me understand why you believe what you do.

However, I see no scriptural basis for this explanation. Indeed, I see a serious contradiction: Then God said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness”. (Genesis 1:26)

 

[Stephen168]

I think it can be explained in Catholic terms as the worship they give their God the Father is latria. Their Jesus is given hyper-dulia and their Holy Ghost is given dulia. With the understanding, of course, that we would never use dulia and hyper-dulia in describing worship given to the Holy Trinity.

That makes sense.

 

[Stephen168]

Yes, I appreciate you explaining this to me in detail. It has helped me understand why you believe what you do.

However, I see no scriptural basis for this explanation. Indeed, I see a serious contradiction: Then God said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness ”. (Genesis 1:26)

There is plenty of biblical support including Genesis 1:26. I can understand your confusion, because as I said in my post to Ruthanne; Mormons have the same meaning for being and person.

AND as we all know, Mormons have many beliefs and practices which come from the mind of Joseph Smith with zero biblical support, and Mormons don’t have a problem with it. So claiming biblical support seems silly to me.

 

[RebeccaJ]

They still ask questions like, “Was Jesus praying to himself?”, in discussing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. They reject the One God of Christianity, entirely, and then attempt replacement theology, and overlays of Mormon teaching, in hopes of making their rejection look like acceptance.

And still denying the One True God of Christianity…

However, I see no scriptural basis for this explanation. Indeed, I see a serious contradiction: Then God said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness ”. (Genesis 1:26)

There is absolutely no reason for Mormons to try and look Trinitarian, other than to deceive people into believing something about Mormonism, that isn’t true.

 

[RuthAnne]

I’m not sure how you got this from gazelam. He said D&C “refers to the three divine beings/persons;” therefore Mormons believe their godhead is three beings.

I didn’t. I was being flippant. It’s obvious that they don’t know what they believe. This is one of those questions that I could probably ask a hundred times and get a hundred different answers. As far as I’m concerned, the answer to my questions is “I don’t know.”

I’m not convinced that they don’t regard Joseph Smith as one of their Gods. Don’t they believe that he will determine who will go into their highest heaven?

 

[RuthAnne]

They said they worship all three beings as one god. But do they worship them equally? Do they pray to all three equally? I’ve been told no they do not.

They pray to all three. It’s a “package deal”, remember?

 

[RuthAnne]

I just stumbled across this quote by Bruce R. McConkie:

We do not worship the Son, and we do not worship the Holy Ghost. I know perfectly well what the scriptures say about worshiping Christ and Jehovah, but they are speaking in an entirely different sense—the sense of standing in awe and being reverentially grateful to him who has redeemed us. Worship in the true and saving sense is reserved for God the first, the Creator.

So, we have:

Worship of the Son is indistinguishable from that of the Father.

and then we have:

I know perfectly well what the scriptures say about worshiping Christ and Jehovah, but they are speaking in an entirely different sense

Oops.

 

[mtolympus]

There is plenty of biblical support including Genesis 1:26. I can understand your confusion, because as I said in my post to Ruthanne; Mormons have the same meaning for being and person.

The point of Genesis was to reveal to us that man was created to be like God. A one person being is not like a three person being, no way.

 

[RebeccaJ]

I’m not convinced that they don’t regard Joseph Smith as one of their Gods. Don’t they believe that he will determine who will go into their highest heaven?

IMO, had Smith lived longer, he was headed in a direction to where he would have declared himself to be a god.

 

[Stephen168]

The point of Genesis was to reveal to us that man was created to be like God. A one person being is not like a three person being, no way.

There are hundreds of thousands of characteristics which could be used to compare one being to another. Using your reasoning, I could make a case that God is female, 62” tall, blue eyes, red hair, and left handed. You could us Genesis 1:26 to mean anything, so it does not contradict the Christian belief in God. The Christian belief is that God is a rational being and made man in his image; a rational being.

 

[mtolympus]

There is absolutely no reason for Mormons to try and look Trinitarian, other than to deceive people into believing something about Mormonism, that isn’t true.

We have no desire to look like we are Trinitarian. The first thing the missionaries teach is that Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ and that they are two separate beings.

 

[RebeccaJ]

When a Mormon claims they worship their godhead, I’m pretty sure it is an attempt to compare such a claim to Christians who worship the Holy Trinity.

I’ve read more than one Mormon who claimed the godhead is a Trinity.

Sure, some of that nonsense could be explained as a lot of ignorance among Mormons about Christian doctrines. But that only goes so far.

 

[mtolympus]

“Which Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one God, infinite and eternal, without end.” D&C 20:28.
We believe these words came from Jesus Christ by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Therefore, we believe they are true. It has never been reveled to us exactly how this is true, so we do the best we can when we try to explain it. However, it makes more sense to me that three persons can be one God, than it does to say that three persons must be the same being to be one God.

 

[mtolympus]

There are hundreds of thousands of characteristics which could be used to compare one being to another. Using your reasoning, I could make a case that God is female, 62” tall, blue eyes, red hair, and left handed. You could us Genesis 1:26 to mean anything, so it does not contradict the Christian belief in God. The Christian belief is that God is a rational being and made man in his image; a rational being.

God would not say let us make man “after our likeness” if He wanted to make man to be different than Himself. What then would be to point of God saying let us make man “after our likeness”?

God said that man was made in the likeness of God in the same way a son is made in the likeness of his father.

 

[RebeccaJ]

“Which Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one God, infinite and eternal, without end.” D&C 20:28.
We believe these words came from Jesus Christ by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Therefore, we believe they are true. It has never been reveled to us exactly how this is true, so we do the best we can when we try to explain it. However, it makes more sense to me that three persons can be one God, than it does to say that three persons must be the same being to be one God.

Yes we know Mormonism is not rational. Three distinct beings cannot be one god without redefining the word one to mean “one or more”.

God has revealed Himself as One. God has revealed Himself as three persons. We believe what God has revealed.

Three distinct persons, in one being, does not require the word “one” to be redefined.