OK, I Am Confused. Do Mormons Believe In The Trinity?

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Stephen168 said:
Now you can answer the original question: Are you saying that faith is not enough to know which Church is the true Church of Christ?
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No obviously not cuz I just said you need works… Did not read my last post?
 
mormonboy said:
How can you repent for your sins if you have no knowlege of Jesus Christ or you don’t believe in him?
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You think God will judge you to hell for not knowing something?
Scriptorian wasn’t referring to Heaven, he was referring to paradise and prison (or hell in other words). Hell is a waiting place for those who have passed who have not had the opportunity to accept and embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paradise is a where the righteous wait. All will await the judegement of our Savior.
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Then he was going off on a tangent.

Final reward, after judgment. Either you are with God, or you are not. If you are not with God, then this is not heaven. It is clear, through all of the Bible, heaven is being in the presence of God.
 
mormonboy said:
Im not sure what your point is…

I have faith in Christ and I don’t know that it would be correct to say he is a man. I think I know what you are saying though.
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Stephen168 said:
A single human being like Joseph Smith or hundreds of Bishops who had the truth passed down to them from Christ through the Apostles?
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You religion is based on the word of ONE man. The Council of Nicea was attended by hundreds of Bishops who had the truth passed down to them from Christ through the Apostles.

You may have hundreds of Bishops now but all they have is the word of Joseph Smith just like you do.
 
Stephen168 said:
You religion is based on the word of ONE man. The Council of Nicea was attended by hundreds of Bishops who had the truth passed down to them from Christ through the Apostles.

You may have hundreds of Bishops now but all they have is the word of Joseph Smith just like you do.
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Hundreds is an understatement… Try thousands. If I recall, the Catholic tradition is based on the word of one man, Peter…
 
RebeccaJ said:
You think God will judge you to hell for not knowing something?

Then he was going off on a tangent.

Final reward, after judgment. Either you are with God, or you are not. If you are not with God, then this is not heaven. It is clear, through all of the Bible, heaven is being in the presence of God.
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Scriptorian did a great job of staying basic and on topic… Your understanding of hell is what we call outer darkness. A better way of explaining it is the 3 degrees Celestial, Terrestial, Telestial that aren’t considered hell. The Celestial Glory is heaven. Outer darkness is hell.

Your from Utah right? Did you used to attend the Mormon faith?
 
Stephen168 said:
Try answering the question

Are you saying that faith is not enough to know which Church is the true Church of Christ?

Is faith all you need to know which church is the true Church of Christ?
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??? your argument is lame… Your the type of person who gives your church a bad rep.
 
cothrige said:
BTW, Scriptorian, I am confident that I won’t convince you of anything on this, and I am not trying to browbeat you about it. I brought the subject up only to ask about what seemed to me to be an inconsistency. I am quite convinced that I was right in that. But, in any case, I have enjoyed the give and take on it so far, and I wanted to thank you for taking the time to discuss it with me.
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You’re welcome. I enjoy the discussion.

I guess I just don’t understand the disconnect. Human and God are not the same kind of word nor the same kind of idea for me. In fact, “God” and “god” are different to me also. One is a title used to describe the Godhead, and the other is a generic word for any type of deified person or thing. The word “gods” is the plural form of the generic word “god” and not the plural of the title “God.”

Let me try an analogy to paint the picture. In the Bible there was a man by the name of Jacob. Jacob was given a new name after a miraculous experience. The new name was “Israel.” Israel was one person.

Then Jacob had twelve sons and some daughters who had children and grew the family into a large nation. That nation was called “Israel” because it came from the man Israel. “Israel” was a title for the nation. Israel was one person, but when using the name as a title, it referred to more than one person.

Similarly, “God” is a single person when referring to God the Father, but it may also refer to the title of the Godhead that is made up of more than one person.
 
cothrige said:
Consider evil. In this world people do evil. Do you think God created or willed that evil exist? No, and it doesn’t, technically speaking. God didn’t create it because it is not a positive reality. There is no such thing as evil, per se, but rather it is nothing but the absence of good. God created things as good, and free will allows us to turn away from good and that we call evil. It is the absence of good. Eternity is similar. You can choose good, but if you don’t you will have the opposite, hell. Will God send us there? No. Does he want us to go there? No. It is our choice. Respond to his grace, and we are saved. Reject his grace and we are condemned. All we have to do is get in the lifeboat and stop trying to convince ourselves that the Captain is at fault for our jumping in the water.
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Unfortunately, I do consider evil from time to time. I call it temptation… 😦

I must once again emphatically disagree with you on this one. You take a hot and cold position on evil, my friend. In other words like cold is the absence of heat, you say evil is the absence of good. That’s not right.

God did not create evil. A perfectly good God would not do such a thing. But evil does exist in and of itself. And not as the absence of good as you say. For example, murder is an act of evil not an act of not being good enough to not commit murder.

So if God did not create evil an it currently exists, who created it? The answer is that good and evil are co-eternal with God. They have always existed. God has his free will to choose either and always chooses good. That is part of what makes him God.

The devil has his free will to choose either and always chooses evil.

Between these two extremes is mankind. We also have our free will and we sometimes choose good and sometimes choose evil. God, however, has prepared a way for us to be saved from our evil choices and be made perfectly good as he is through Jesus Christ. We must have faith on him, repent of sins, receive his ordinances (or sacraments), and endure in righteousness to the end of our lives.

The devil has set up a similar, yet opposite, program for evil (again a completely different tangent).

But evil most certainly exists, and is not the “absence of good.”
 
mormonboy said:
??? your argument is lame… Your the type of person who gives your church a bad rep.
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It is not an argument it is a question. It would seem like it would be a yes or no question.

YES, I believe all you need is faith to know the true Church of Christ.

NO, You need more than just faith to know the true Church of Christ.
 
Stephen168 said:
It is not an argument it is a question. It would seem like it would be a yes or no question.

YES, I believe all you need is faith to know the true Church of Christ.

NO, You need more than just faith to know the true Church of Christ.
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I figured you would have had the common sense to figure I was saying no, brother. No offense but you had more than enough evidence to draw from to get my answer.
 
RebeccaJ said:
Jesus died for ALL. A person cannot atone themselves.

Are those in the terrestrial or telestial WITH God?
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You are right, a person cannot atone for his own sins. But that is not what he would be doing in hell. He would paying for his own sins. Paying the spiritual consequences, as it were, because he would not except the payment given freely by Jesus Christ.

The Terrestrial or the Telestial Kingdom is NOT WITH God.
 
mormonboy said:
Hundreds is an understatement… Try thousands. If I recall, the Catholic tradition is based on the word of one man, Peter…
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No, there were many many witnesses to the live, death, and resurrection of Christ, and they passed on their knowledge and authority from generation to generation.
 
Scriptorian said:
I guess I just don’t understand the disconnect. Human and God are not the same kind of word nor the same kind of idea for me. In fact, “God” and “god” are different to me also. One is a title used to describe the Godhead, and the other is a generic word for any type of deified person or thing. The word “gods” is the plural form of the generic word “god” and not the plural of the title “God.”
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Let us be more direct and just use being. If there are two beings you cannot say being and mean both. There are divine beings, or human beings, or so on. In the case of the divine, if there is one being it is either God or a god. If there are two it would have to be Gods or gods. The reason that Trinitarian Christians uphold that one can say God in reference to the three divine persons is not because of tradition or any such, but simply because there is only one Divine Being. There are not two, so there can’t be Gods in that case. It is the number of beings which dictate the word used, IMHO, and so without a dogma on singularity of being in the Godhead, which you do deny, I really just cannot imagine any reasonable way to avoid a contradiction of number.

Now, as to Israel and such, I think you are in the same area as before with Elohim. These are specific words which grammatically are flexible in number, whereas God is not. There are many examples of these kinds of words. One can speak of one deer or two deer while one can never say three being. That just doesn’t work, and so the analogy fails.
 
cothrige said:
Let us be more direct and just use being. If there are two beings you cannot say being and mean both. There are divine beings, or human beings, or so on. In the case of the divine, if there is one being it is either God or a god. If there are two it would have to be Gods or gods. The reason that Trinitarian Christians uphold that one can say God in reference to the three divine persons is not because of tradition or any such, but simply because there is only one Divine Being. There are not two, so there can’t be Gods in that case. It is the number of beings which dictate the word used, IMHO, and so without a dogma on singularity of being in the Godhead, which you do deny, I really just cannot imagine any reasonable way to avoid a contradiction of number.

Now, as to Israel and such, I think you are in the same area as before with Elohim. These are specific words which grammatically are flexible in number, whereas God is not. There are many examples of these kinds of words. One can speak of one deer or two deer while one can never say three being. That just doesn’t work, and so the analogy fails.
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Well, let’s just agree to disagree, then. Our definitions don’t mesh. I think the word “God” can be flexible in number, and you don’t. You believe “a being” can be flexible in number, and I don’t. That’s okay.

It’s must be that hardheadedness our religions have beat into us, right?
 
mormonboy said:
Scriptorian did a great job of staying basic and on topic… Your understanding of hell is what we call outer darkness. A better way of explaining it is the 3 degrees Celestial, Terrestial, Telestial that aren’t considered hell. The Celestial Glory is heaven. Outer darkness is hell.
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Yes, I know this. I’m giving the Christian POV. Which is, hell=separation from God. This is also the definition given in the Bible.
Your from Utah right? Did you used to attend the Mormon faith?
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I am from UT. I was raised LDS.
 
Scriptorian said:
I must once again emphatically disagree with you on this one. You take a hot and cold position on evil, my friend. In other words like cold is the absence of heat, you say evil is the absence of good. That’s not right.

God did not create evil. A perfectly good God would not do such a thing. But evil does exist in and of itself. And not as the absence of good as you say. For example, murder is an act of evil not an act of not being good enough to not commit murder.
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What about freezing to death? That is a frightening reality with dire consequences, and it is nothing but the result of the mere absence of heat. Even complete darkness is a frightening thing to consider, but it is not a thing itself, but merely the absence of light. And, the absence of something life-giving like heat means death, and that is worth considering.
 
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