I love your religion but this doesn't make any sense

[RebeccaJ]

Your starting to sound like a mormon. Careful there.

Actually, the seeds of the Trinity are found in Mormonism. The common belief between Mormonism and Catholicism is that there are three disctint persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. It is not unusual for a Mormon to claim that the beliefs are identical. In the economic sense, we hold many of the same beliefs.

Their relationship to each other is where the two beliefs diverge, quite radically. These are ontological differences.

These terms are usually foreign to a Mormon, so here you go (from the wikipedia entry on Trinity)

• Economic Trinity: This refers to the acts of the triune God with respect to the creation, history, salvation, the formation of the Church, the daily lives of believers, etc. and describes how the Trinity operates within history in terms of the roles or functions performed by each of the Persons of the Trinity—God’s relationship with creation.
• Ontological (or essential or immanent) Trinity: This speaks of the interior life of the Trinity (John 1:1–2, note John 1:1)—the reciprocal relationships of Father, Son and Spirit to each other without reference to God’s relationship with creation.
  One very important distinction is that belief in One God brings about one very important understanding. God became Man, for our Salvation.

 

[falisrm]

Claire, are you sure your not a mormon?

 

[RobHom]

Claire, are you sure your not a mormon?

I was wondering about that too…

 

[RebeccaJ]

falisrm, I was thinking about “the take on faith”. We don’t believe things just for the sake of believing them. We call the Trinity a Mystery. By mystery we don’t mean throw our hands in the air and shout MYSTERY!

A Mystery is not unknown. God has revealed Himself to us. God has revealed the truth of the Trinity. Thus, the Truth is known. That is not the mystery. What is a Mystery is in the how. We do not know how the three persons of the Trinity are One. We do not know why it is this way. Certainly, if we were going to make something up don’t you think we would make up something that was much simpler? We accept what God has revealed and have Faith that His Truth is just that, Truth.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Answer redux…you mix a bunch of “what I think the Trinity is, not what it actually is” together, so your questions is like sorting alphabet soup…one question at a time…here ya go

So mormons and catholics have the same doctrine about the resurrection.

I would say we have similar doctrines. There are important differences.

Meaning, we will all be resurrected with our physical bodies and we’ll all have physical bodies in heaven because of the resurrection. Just like Christ was resurrected with his body and appeared in his flesh a few times after his death. Since Christ has his physical body, which was resurrected, that means Christ is in our image both physically and spiritually.

Christ is not in our image, we are in His image.

How in the world does that jive with the concept of the trinity that god is everywhere and nowhere at once,

This is straight out of Catholic 101, in a Gospel Doctrine class, which, is not how a Catholic describes God. However, within this question is a fundamental difference between Mormonism and Catholicism and that is this:

• Mormons believe that God creates “things” (us, the world, the universe, etc) out of “existing material”.
• Catholics believe that God created EVERYTHING, which includes any “material”.

This fundamental difference extends into the creation of time and space itself. So, in the terms that we understand today, God exists OUTSIDE of both time and space, as He is the Creator of both. You are intelligent and can consider this and come to a conclusion, are you not, that existing outside of time and space means that you are “no where” and “every where” all at once.

and is combined with god with no form?

Also another concept from your Mormon Catholic 101 course, which has nothing to do with what a Catholic believes. We believe in ONE God. The Trinity are 3 distinct individuals. God the Father is spirit, God the Son is flesh, God the Holy Spirit is spirit. God the Son, Jesus, IS God.

Since the concept of the trinity was developed during the Nicene Council,

Also out of your Mormon Catholic 101 course. The doctrine of the Trinity was not developed, every Christian believed in One God, and we have proclaimed the truth of the One God in every baptism, “the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. The Nicene council only continued to proclaim what was believed. The nut that was cracked was in describing what had always been believed, in clearer, more precise terms. Which was necessitated by the heresies of Arius.

wasn’t that council one of the biggest failures in world history?

Why do you believe this?

after 3 days they just came to some concensus about the nature of god even though they didn’t completely agree with.

Three days is an interesting idea, where did you get that from? The council formerly opened on May 20th and was in session for an entire month before the council promulgated the Nicene Creed.

As I said already, there was complete agreement. Of 300 bishops, Arius and a two of his followers were the dissenters, every other catholic bishop who was present confirmed what had always been believed as doctrine. Including 20 bishops who were initially followers of Arius.

I didn’t know voting on a doctrine is how you determine any spiritual truth. If the council got 51% of the vote that the godhead are 3 seperate individuals with one purpose, would that mean their 1700 year history with this doctrine be completely different then it is today? Why didn’t they just pray about it instead of voting?

YOU believe that God does not guide His Church, where, we understand and believe that the Holy Spirit guides our bishops. Including those bishops who were present at Nicaea. They all prayed and were guided by the Holy Spirit. The history of the doctrine of the Trinity goes back to the NT.

The doctrine was not voted on, what was voted on was whether or not the Arian heresy held any truth according to Apostolic teachings, ie, doctrine. The Arian heresy was the new idea, not the doctrine of what we call today, the Trinity.

Sorry, just one more thing that doesn’t make any sense.

catholic.com/thisrock/2002/0211clas.asp

You need to tell me what you don’t understand in the document.

 

[RobHom]

I recently read a book, suggested by my Monsignor…and while it wasn’t written by a Catholic for Catholics… he highly recommended it. My wife bought it, she read it, passed it on to me…and I read it.

It is, for a basically fictional piece, a very good book…and theologically it is pretty sound…but more than anything else, during the reading of this book there was a really great innate (?) portrayal of the Holy Trinity… that really clarified the concept of the Holy Trinity.

Aside from being a very good book…it is very truthful and revealing. I highly recommend it, especially to people with questions about the “Holy Trinity”… it will resolve your questions.

The book is: THE SHACK theshackbook.com/

 

[AMDGtoo]

If all believers hold the priesthood, why do they not afficiate with baptisms or other ordinances priests do? .

Huh? Are you confusing the Mormon idea of all it’s men holding the priesthood with the Christian idea of universal priesthood (also called the royal priesthood) of all the Baptized and complaining that we Catholics do not follow what you Mormons claim? It sure seems that you have confused the ministerial priesthood (that held by our priests) and the one held by all the Christian Baptized. Honestly, I think you’d have less problems understanding if you’d just admit that we are not now and never have been Mormons and we do not share the same ideas (even if your people tell you that we do.)

FYI, all Catholics are Baptized priest, prophet, and king. (I attended four Catholic Baptisims just this past Sunday.) That’s the royal priesthood–the universal priesthood. The ministerial priesthood (the one that allows men to convey the Jesus’ Sacraments to others) is conferred by the Sacrament of Holy Orders. So you see, they are not the same thing and certainly not the same as what Mormons believe.

BTW, again FYI, any person (intending to do as the Church does) may Baptize in a true emergency.

 

[Lion_of_Narnia]

The actual vote count at Nicea was more like 250 to 2–the 318 bishop count seems to stem from some idea of completeness of numbers.

In any case, 250 to 2 is better than 99.5% in favor of the Trinity against the heresy of Arianism–as Father Mitch Pacwa says, they don’t even call that a “close vote” in Chicago!

 

[peary1]

So mormons and catholics have the same doctrine about the resurrection. Meaning, we will all be resurrected with our physical bodies and we’ll all have physical bodies in heaven because of the resurrection. Just like Christ was resurrected with his body and appeared in his flesh a few times after his death. Since Christ has his physical body, which was resurrected, that means Christ is in our image both physically and spiritually. How in the world does that jive with the concept of the trinity that god is everywhere and nowhere at once, and is combined with god with no form? Since the concept of the trinity was developed during the Nicene Council, wasn’t that council one of the biggest failures in world history? after 3 days they just came to some concensus about the nature of god even though they didn’t completely agree with. I didn’t know voting on a doctrine is how you determine any spiritual truth. If the council got 51% of the vote that the godhead are 3 seperate individuals with one purpose, would that mean their 1700 year history with this doctrine be completely different then it is today? Why didn’t they just pray about it instead of voting?

Sorry, just one more thing that doesn’t make any sense.

catholic.com/thisrock/2002/0211clas.asp

It doesn’t make sense to me why the LDS always believed that African-Americans couldn’t serve as either members or Mormon priests in your church because they were made ‘inferior’. It doesn’t make sense to me that the LDS at one time supported polygamy and, when the heat was on, had a ‘revelation’ from God that changed it. Sorry, just a few more things that don’t make sense…

 

[falisrm]

Again, Peary1, This very description was explained on the 2 page of this thread. It was a change in principle and law, not doctrine. It was the same belief that Noah and Abraham taught. ANDGtoo, I wasn’t the one that made that assumption about the priesthood. It was one of your catholic friends here that thought of that concept you have concerns with. She was trying to say that everyone already held the priesthood so that solves the shortage problem the catholic church has. I was telling her the same thing your talking about. Even though everyone who is baptised receives the benefits of the priesthood and the blessings or benefits of it, they don’t receive the power or authority that the priests have to perform communion or baptism. Thanks for confirming that information. She was a off quite a bit.