In asking this question I mean no disrespect to our LDS brothers and sisters. I ask for your forgiveness in advance if I offend anyone. I am just interested in this point of LDS Christology. Here is the question:
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem was He fully God (or a god, whichever you prefer)? By this I mean was He equal in all ways to the Father? Lying in Mary’s arms did He possess infinite wisdom, power, glory, goodness, mercy, and justice, ever to be worshiped and adored, equal to “Heavenly Father” in all things, considering the totality of His person, fully human and fully divine? Was He to be worshiped lying in the manger?
Thank you &
Merry Christmas!
Hi, Dcana,
Merry Christmas to you also, and great peace for the New Year.
Latter-day Saints use the expression, “God,” “God the Son”, or “the Son of God”, and not the other lower case version you had in parenthesis whenever referring to Jesus Christ as God.
Jesus being literally the Son of God, with power over death because He was the Son of God and thus possessed the power within Himself to resurrect Himself and to give up His own life through death when it was time through His own voluntary act, was God when He was born of Mary. His literal Father was God the Father, through Mary’s conception by the power of the Holy Ghost sanctifying her body to carry in her womb the Son of God, having conceived Him through miraculous divine means since she was a virgin and remained a virgin then and until after He was born.
Jesus had been God omnipotent in the pre-mortal world where He offered to come to this earth to be our Redeemer and Savior. He was omniscient and omnipotent and in full accord with Father in Heaven in all ways, during the time beginning when He was the “First Born” in the spirit and all the time after that, but came to earth as a baby with a veil over His memory and with the learning process a part of His life on earth. He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” He “waxed strong in spirit”. So that would mean He wasn’t “equal in all ways to His Father” in terms of omniscience as a baby or a toddler. But by the time He was twelve years old, He possessed greater wisdom and understanding than the most learned of the learned Jewish scholars. No question that He learned faster than any other person on earth has ever learned, by a huge magnitude of difference.
He was worshiped by the wise men who came to the place where He was at about age two, and both Anna and Simeon also showed that they knew He was the promised Messiah and the light of the world when they saw Him soon after He was born. If one of us had been there and were familiar with the Biblical prophecies about Him and about His birth, then no doubt we would have felt the same desire to worship Him as did the wise men. It was a totally righteous act to do so.
But that is not to say that Jesus possessed “infinite wisdom” at that point in His life on earth as a baby and a toddler. He “increased in wisdom” (Luke 2:52), so that means He experienced a learning process from the time He was a baby up through some time before age thirty when He began His actual public ministry, but learned faster and with perfectness in that learning as compared with any other person on earth, each of whose learning is very imperfect and much more gradual.
I hope this has answered your questions.
