Mormons & the Trinity

[catholic1seeks]

I have just figured out that a friend of mine who sits with me at lunch is a Mormon. Though Mormons believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are different gods, how can I persuade the person into understanding the truth about God?

I don’t completely understand their beliefs, but I do know about Joseph Smith and the Mormon belief in continual revelation. Do they take the Bible in serious consideration? Would the Bible be a good way to get to the point?

Or should I take another route? What about the early Church Fathers? I do know they believe that the early Church was corrupt, so historical evidence may not have a good effect.

I’ll probably try to provide the contradictions within the Book of Mormon and other teachings of their “prophets”.

Any advice is appreciated!

 

[DavidFilmer]

Do they take the Bible in serious consideration? Would the Bible be a good way to get to the point?

I could give you the answer, but I think it would better to ask your friend these questions. Learn about the Mormon faith from him. This shows that you are interested in his perspective, but it provides opportunities for an exploration of his beliefs.

Or should I take another route?.. they believe that the early Church was corrupt, so historical evidence may not have a good effect.

I recommend that you focus specifically on this corruption (which, in Mormon theology, is called the great (or total) apostasy).

The Mormons claim that the Catholic Church (ie, the Church established by Jesus and the Apostles) was valid for a brief period, but it fell into apostasy.

If this claim is true, then not only would the Catholic Church be invalidated, but all Christian churches (because they all derive from the Catholic Church). Thus, Joseph Smith could have been correct when he (reportedly) prayed about which Church was true, and received revelation that none were.

Thus, apostasy is both the strength of Mormonism, and it’s weakness. It is a weakness because it is not true.

The good thing about dealing with the question of apostasy is that it has very little to do with subjective opinion or doctrine. It would be the result of a single event, which would be a simple matter of historical record.

Ask you friend to explain, from a historical perspective, which specific event led to this apostasy. Insist upon a name and a date.

Don’t let him talk about “gradual” apostasy, because it doesn’t work that way. Don’t let him start naming the personal sins of various popes and leaders (which is individual apostasy, not an apostasy of the Church).

The Church becomes apostate when (and only when) She changes. The Catholic Church is the One True Church established by Jesus Christ. If she changed, even in some small way, she could not longer make that claim (that’s what “change” means - it once was one thing, but now it is another). The Church becomes apostate ONLY when She changes (in essential nature, not outward appearances).

The Church would change if She changed some doctrine, or added some new doctrine, or deleted some old doctrine. These are the ONLY things that could cause apostasy of the Church. And that event would have a name and a date associated with it.

These aren’t discussions that involve different subjective interpretations of Scripture. These are discussions about objective historic events.

When did that happen?

 

[thistle]

I have just figured out that a friend of mine who sits with me at lunch is a Mormon. Though Mormons believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are different gods, how can I persuade the person into understanding the truth about God?

I don’t completely understand their beliefs, but I do know about Joseph Smith and the Mormon belief in continual revelation. Do they take the Bible in serious consideration? Would the Bible be a good way to get to the point?

Or should I take another route? What about the early Church Fathers? I do know they believe that the early Church was corrupt, so historical evidence may not have a good effect.

I’ll probably try to provide the contradictions within the Book of Mormon and other teachings of their “prophets”.

Any advice is appreciated!

angelfire.com/ms/seanie/mormon/index.html

 

[catholic1seeks]

NEED YOUR ADVICE!

How should I talk with this person? I think I’m going to begin by just simply asking her why she believes in the revelations of Joseph Smith.

I then want to get into the Mormon belief of the apostasy. I plan on using this as the ground for everything else because if there was not a complete apostasy of the true Church, then the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not true.

One of the main things we planned on talking about was the nature of God. Of course, Mormons believe in many gods and they believe the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are separate gods.

What do I need to do to prove the existence of the ONE, TRUE GOD who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? The basis must be to prove that there is only one God, right? Then what!!?

Anything else I should know? What else should I do? Are there any contradictions with the Book of Mormon (for example) or the revelations of Joseph Smith?

What’s the Best way to get to the point? I guess the main discussions will be about
a) The apostasy &
b) God

But I don’t know how to be successful!

-----> Thanks to the user who provided that “www.angelfire.com…” link!

 

[Oscarthecat]

I think it is good that you want to talk to her about her faith and see if you can help her to think about some of the problems with mormon beliefs.

But the thing is that mormons, at least the ones I know, are trained to answer the basic kinds of objections that most people pose to them. If you go in there with a couple of standard challenges, she’ll most likely be able to respond with something that makes sense to her. Most of these types of things can be difficult to discuss because the mormons lack a systematic approach to their theology and at some point they can always just fall back on saying “it is just a matter of faith…”-

The good thing about that is that you don’t have to do much more than ask questions in order to start unraveling mormon theology. Just remember that the goal isn’t to bring her to any kind of “ah hah!” moment, because it probably isn’t going to happen like that- instead, you should just try to ask questions that make her dig a little deeper into the foundations of what she believes and figure out for herself that there are a lot of things that just don’t make sense.

For example- and this is just one of many different routes you could go- mormons believe that the lost tribe of israelites populated the Americas long ago, with massive cities and large populations, with a well developed culture. The problem with this is that there is not any archaological record of this-not a single broken pot or two stones stacked on top of each other that would show such a people actually existed, nor are the “landmarks” mentioned by J. Smith anywhere to be found.

But rather than get into all of that, which will just put her on the defensive…

Ask her about the history of America as taught by the Mormons.
Ask her how the native americans fit into that.
Ask her if the mormon church has done any research on the presence of DNA markers in modern native american populations that show they are of Jewish descent.
Then ask whether any of that history can be proven in the archeological record.
Ask how well the book of mormon lines up with the known geography of the Americas.

You can look up info on all of that stuff on Catholic.com and many other reputable websites…I think that there’s even a southpark episode on this stuff.

Let her do the talking, you just keep asking questions-

 

[Oscarthecat]

You might also want to think about browsing some mormon apologist websites- they list a lot of the most difficult questions people ask about Mormonism, and then give their canned answers-

That might help you to get a little ahead of the game-

For example, this mormon apologist site addresses some of the issues I brought up in my last post…

lds-mormon.com/indians_lamanites.shtml

This article deals with the question of how native americans fit into the history of the americas described in the book of mormon