Mormans and polytheism

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Psalm45_9

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From what I have read; Mormans believe that the persons of the trinity are sepreate and independent gods. Not three persons of one God. If this is true, then what is the Morman reasoning about the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no gods but me.”
 
What does reason have to do with Mormons? The whole religion was read out of a hat.
 
I am just wondering how they get around the 10 commandments. It might be a good catholic apologetic tool.
 
Psalm45:9:
I am just wondering how they get around the 10 commandments. It might be a good catholic apologetic tool.
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They simply don’t teach them…

OR they have revised their own 10 commandments… smidged this, fudged that, ommitted another thing… who knows… Their religion is very secrative and a lot of the info you find is based on former members…
 
Actually, you are correct, Mormons believe that God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are three separate gods, but that they are so united in purpose as to act as 1.

How they get around the 10 commandments…Mormons believe that the God of the Old Testament is actually Jesus Christ. They believe that it is Jesus Christ who the Bible was written about, not God the Father.

How they get around the specific statement…first you must look at what it says in the King James Version. they accept no version but this. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Exodus 20:3. This translation doesn’t say anything literally about not being other gods, just that no gods can come before our God (which they believe is Jesus Christ). Interesting aside to that, they ONLY pray to God the Father. they believe it is sacreligious to pray to ANYONE but God the Father, even Jesus Christ.
 
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tkdnick:
How they get around the 10 commandments…Mormons believe that the God of the Old Testament is actually Jesus Christ. They believe that it is Jesus Christ who the Bible was written about, not God the Father.

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Well hmmm…I grew up Mormon - I don’t recall being taught Jesus was the old testament god – I was always taught it was God the father. The new testament was all about Jesus. Your other statements are all correct - especially about “no other gods before me”.
And yes - they do teach the 10 commandments in mormon church.
 
Thank you everyone. When I read about these non-traditional quasi-christian denominations and the Scope trials of the 1920s I see God showing the world the folly of Sola Scriptura.
 
jjhistory-

Perhaps the Mormon teaching has changed. Or…perhaps my Mormon friends are wrong. I have had several discussions with my Mormon friends, and they have contended every time that the God of the Old Testament is in fact Jesus Christ. In fact, one of my friends told me just a couple of days ago that God the father is hardly ever mentioned in the Bible, if He is mentioned at all. I obviously found all this to be quite interesting. Any thoughts on this strange situation?
 
I live in a heavily Mormon area and I have never heard about Jesus Chirst being the God of the OT. My understanding of their take on the 10 Commandments is that, as stated above, they believe that Trinity means 3 seperate gods that rule this world together. However, they seem to consider God the Father primary, as he is the one they address their prayers to, typically as “Heavenly Father.”

The more I am exposed to Mormons, I am discovering that the rank and file of them are not very well versed in the particulars of their own faith. Even though they go through years of childhood “seminary” training and go out on missions, the knowledge of Mormon theology does not seem to be very deep.You are liable to get any number of answers from any number of Mormons that you ask. Perhaps that is why they seldom question the inconsitencies in their religion–they just don’t think about it that much.
 
Mormons–please note the correct spelling–are fundamentally polytheistic. Their theology of the Godhead is rather sophisticated–or rather dishonest, depending upon your point of view. They see the Godhead as being “one” in purpose only, not “one in person”. There is a Latter-Day Saint posting here infrequently who is really quite knowledgeable about how the LDS re-define traditional Christian concepts and argue for their own theology. He seems to be associated with a Mormon apologetics organization known as FARMS–I forget what the acronym stands for. Perhaps he will see this thread and post here.

I would strongly encourage folks to avoid making obvious errors in dealing with cultists of any sort. The Latter-Day Saints tolerate the nickname “Mormon” but don’t care for it greatly–it was originally an insulting epithet. To mispell the word suggests indifference or thinly veiled hostility, and they will simply tune you out. Wouldn’t you do the same if someone repeatedly described you as a “Cathlic” or “Cathlik” rather than as a “Catholic”? Or even as a “Romanist”? It is acceptable to speak of the Latter-Day Saints as Mormons, or as LDS; they will sometimes refer to themselves as “the Saints”–but on a Roman Catholic forum this is bound to create confusion, not to mention that it will likely raise objections from some Roman Catholics.

Typos happen of course. And sometimes one can use a nickname simply as a way of avoiding a post that is too repetitious-sounding. But I recommend that one first refer to the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as “Latter-Day Saints” or as “LDS” and use the word “Mormon” only sparingly.
 
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tkdnick:
Actually, you are correct, Mormons believe that God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are three separate gods, but that they are so united in purpose as to act as 1.

How they get around the 10 commandments…Mormons believe that the God of the Old Testament is actually Jesus Christ. They believe that it is Jesus Christ who the Bible was written about, not God the Father.

How they get around the specific statement…first you must look at what it says in the King James Version. they accept no version but this. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Exodus 20:3. This translation doesn’t say anything literally about not being other gods, just that no gods can come before our God (which they believe is Jesus Christ). Interesting aside to that, they ONLY pray to God the Father. they believe it is sacreligious to pray to ANYONE but God the Father, even Jesus Christ.
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What I think you are referring to is that Latter-Day Saints have speculated that Jesus Christ was co-identical with the Jehovah of the Old Testament. However: God the Father is the supreme deity of the Old Testament and in LDS theology only our Heavenly Father is entitled to receive prayer and worship. I am not certain that the Jesus-is-Jehovah doctrine is binding upon all Mormons.

LDS theology is very complex because so many early LDS leaders meandered off into various forms of speculative theology. It really takes years to master the intricacies of some of these things. This leads people to believe that Mormonism is some sort of gnosticism with one level of ‘truth’ for the investigator and casual adherent, and additional levels of truths (some of them apparently in contradiction to what one learns when one first joins the LDS Church) for those who advance in the faith. I don’t actually think this is the case. I think that there are just varying levels of sophistication about LDS doctrine.

I will say that some of the speculative theology of early LDS leaders is especially difficult to digest if one has any sort of Christian background at all–so official LDS catechetical and history works for the prospective convert or the average LDS churchgoer rarely address such issues head-on. One will find little discussion of the Adam-is-God or Blood-Atonement theories of Brigham Young, for instance. Often, the LDS missionaries–if they are aware that certain things may become issues for a convert–will ‘innoculate’ the prospect against such matters by warning them that such things are canards or that the issues are distorted or misconstrued by persecutors of the LDS Church. If they can awaken some degree of a martyr’s complex in the prospect, the would-be convert will automatically tune out anyone who brings such issues up. And too often, the Christian will mingle clearly innaccurate information in with valid issues–which will cast doubt upon the entire conversation. This isn’t necessarily willful–it is simply that we often are not as prepared as we think we might be to address such issues when they come up. So we either cast about our memory banks for things we really never fully digested; or we run and snatch the first piece of printed material we can find from the Internet or the church foyer or the discount table–and get ahold of bad information.

This is one reason I recommend a more cautious approach than using such well-known issues to try to “shock” a Mormon or prospective Mormon into abandoning the LDS Church. Far better, in early contacts, to be able to expound and to defend one’s own faith in a clear manner designed to appeal to a Mormon than to commence with a frontal attack on the LDS Church. To say, “this is what Christians believe; and here’s why . . . what do you think about this?”, is likely to be very effective because it will not provoke the defense mechanisms of the other person. And one is much more likely to be able to accurately expound and defend one’s own beliefs than to tear down someone else’s.
 
Well it seems that the LDS people I am conversing with are in a world all their own when it comes to LDS beliefs about the Old Testament. They told me that Jehovah is Jesus Christ and that Elohim(sp?) is God the father. They have also told me repeatedly that every time the Old Testament refers to “Lord” or “God” that it is referring to Jesus and not God the father. This obviously placed me in a place I have never heard of since Catholics, Protestant Christians, and Jewish people all know that it is in fact referring to God the father.
 
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