The Nature of God in Mormonism.

[BDawg]

I would think that thoughtful reflection on all aspects of human life would be fundamental to living a decent life. Is when a person becomes a person really the equivalent of “angels dancing on the head of a pin” according LDS understanding?

When God hasn’t chosen to reveal anything about it, so all we can do is “theologize” (read: “speculate”) about it.

 

[RebeccaJ]

When God hasn’t chosen to reveal anything about it, so all we can do is “theologize” (read: “speculate”) about it.

This is where you are wrong. The Catholic Church is led by Christ, and via the Holy Spirit, guides us to understand how to implement God’s will in all we do.

In the case of “when does life begin?”, it was not too much of an important point to understand until the advent of artificial birth control and medical abortion.

Using the reasoning skills that God gave us, and by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, prayer and seeking a discipleship of Jesus Christ, the Church discerns, and God guides us, to what a true disciple of Christ would do in these matters.

Via scripture and tradition, we know that God places a high value on human life. And no, not knowing when exactly ensoulment takes place, we err on the side of doing God’s will. Rather than taking a swag at it and hoping God forgives us for rationalizing His truth away.

You keep looking for “where exactly did someone in Catholicism say this”. You are approaching this wrongly, and applying different standards for Catholics than you do LDS.

You believe your prophets guide, and when major social issues arise, it is your prophet who tells you what is correct.

We believe Christ is the head of our Church. And through the Holy Spirit, guides our Church. Do you believe that God is not capable of doing this?

Yes, looking at the Early Church Fathers is important to us. We are an apostolic Church, the Apostles being the first disciples, and so we place a very high value on their teachings. Their teachings were pass on to others, and they to others, and so on and so on. This is the value of the early church writings, as part of reasoning, and discerning God’s will, we can look to the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. However, their teachings are not infallible, and like all humans, they struggled. And tradition is but a part of the ways in which God brings us to understanding. Discernment, truly seeking out God’s desires, prayer, contemplation, the Sacraments, in these ways we become closer to God and through the Holy Spirit, revelation, we are guided.

God’s guidance of His Church did not end in the 2nd century, or the 4th, or the 17th. God has never abandoned His Church.

 

[BDawg]

Hi guys,

Back in Post # 73, I linked to an article on the FAIR website that defended the idea of an anthropomorphic God. It quoted a few non-Mormon scholars, including Christopher Stead (an Anglican at the Cambridge Divinity School) and Jean Daniélou (a Catholic scholar who later became a Cardinal). Both of these guys were top authorities early Jewish/Christian thought, and the influence of the Greek philosophical schools on Christian theology.

I have read their books, and I thought I should point out that these guys were not claiming that everyone should go back to the primitive Jewish Christian theology that included things like anthropomorphism. Rather, they thought that the adoption of Greek philosophical ideas by Christian theologians was a GOOD thing, because it allowed Christianity to reach a broader cultural audience and survive. They viewed this as a necessary “doctrinal development,” ala Cardinal Newman.

I mention this because I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to reason you into a corner. Honestly, there are ways that Catholics can legitimately deal with this kind of information.

On the other hand, I do think the fact that so many Christian scholars recognize that 1) the Biblical writers thought of God in anthropomorphic terms, and 2) they had never even thought of the idea that matter could have been created, fits very well with the idea that Joseph Smith was restoring some ancient truths about God that had been lost through corruption over time.

Furthermore, I want to mention that there are some things in LDS theology, like the idea that God the Father could have had a Father, etc., that don’t show up in any of the ancient Jewish and Christian literature that I know of. Joseph Smith, on the other hand, claimed that “things that had never before been revealed” would be revealed in the last dispensation. Therefore, both Catholics and LDS must postulate that some “doctrinal development” has taken place in this area since the days of the original Apostles.

So what I’m saying is that both Catholics and Mormons who think that everything their Church teaches was also taught in the days of the original Apostles, are historically very naive.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Doctrinal development, ie, where God came to earth as Man?

It is not doctrinal development! It is us humans gaining a further understanding of God.

The earliest Hebrews still had a very pagan view of God. Throughout the OT you see this, and one of these views is the anthropomorphic view. They also believed that pagan gods had power, that is, that they were in fact Gods. Their view of “no other gods before me” was just that. They believed that One God had more power than all the pagan Gods.

Further on, they realize that the pagan gods have no power at all. That there is just One God, True, eternal, and all other gods are false.

Further on, God comes to us as Man, which event is more profound than any other. In all ways, including our understanding of Who God Is. The Jews of today do not accept this revelation, God, as Man. Yet we understand Jesus is God, and we know that God has made it quite clear that He is One.

I AM.

It is not doctrinal changes, it is us humans, learning about the nature of God.

You keep trying to revert!

 

[PaulDupre]

It wasn’t till after all the Catholic prophets were gone that we got a bunch of theologizing about stuff like you mentioned.

No, not theologizing, but the Holy Spirit guiding Jesus’ Church into all truth, just as Jesus promised.

Paul

 

[RebeccaJ]

Christ taught, the Father is spirit.

 

[AMDGtoo]

Origen

Was this among his heresies (according to Jurgen’s Faith of the Early Church Fathers, he was “generally very careful to distinguish between Catholic doctrine and his own speculations” and “undoubtedly suffers from an overly active Platonic infuence”?

and Tertullian

And would that be his Catholic period, his semi-Montanist period, or his heretical Montanist period–in which he had broken with the Catholic Church?

May I suggest a reading of William Jurgen’s The Faith of the Early Fathers. There’s a section of quotes from the Early Church Fathers that deal with how creation was created by God out of nothing (ex nihilo).

 

[BDawg]

Christ taught, the Father is spirit.

Hi Rebecca,

There is a section addressing your objection in the paper I linked in post #73. I think you would find it interesting.

 

[BDawg]

Was this among his heresies (according to Jurgen’s Faith of the Early Church Fathers, he was “generally very careful to distinguish between Catholic doctrine and his own speculations” and “undoubtedly suffers from an overly active Platonic infuence”?

Hi A,

The irony is that Origen was considered the greatest doctrinal authority in Christianity while he was alive. It wasn’t until hundreds of years later that he was condemned about certain teachings (including the pre-existence of souls, for example.)

And would that be his Catholic period, his semi-Montanist period, or his heretical Montanist period–in which he had broken with the Catholic Church?

I’m not sure. Tertullian believed in creatio ex nihilo, in any case. My point was that he acknowledged that this was a disputed point at the time.

May I suggest a reading of William Jurgen’s The Faith of the Early Fathers. There’s a section of quotes from the Early Church Fathers that deal with how creation was created by God out of nothing (ex nihilo).

I have read it, and it’s actually not a bad compendium. However, if you just follow his index of Catholic teachings at the back, you miss all the contrary opinions that are included in the book. And sometimes he lumps ECF teachings together that, in context, are a bit different from one another.

After reading a lot of the Catholic Answers tracts that quote the ECFs, I came to the conclusion that the people who wrote those were just leafing through Jurgens’ index to find likely quotations, rather than really trying to figure out the history of the theology.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Hi Rebecca,

There is a section addressing your objection in the paper I linked in post #73. I think you would find it interesting.

“Does God Have a Body in Human Form?”

YES! Jesus is God Incarnate.

First, Mormons confuse beget with create. God begets GOD. Humans beget humans. God creates humans. This is what sets Jesus apart, he is begotten. We are created. A further understanding of the nature of God, as uncreated.

re: human attributes, yes, the Bible uses language we understand. Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit are One. We say Jesus stands next to the Father, but this is only because we have no other language to describe the actions of the Trinity. What language would you use to describe this??? Do you have any other language but the one you know?

re: spirit…“God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.” The first, “God is Spirit” is a description of His nature. We too, are spirit, we possess the souls that God created. And so it is our souls that come to know God. You make it much more complicated than it is.

Where it speaks to Christian writings corporeal existence, this is how Christians speak of Jesus. You are not understanding, and as is common with Mormon “scholarship” and Trinitarian ideas, you take ideas out of their contextual meaning and make them your own. A sort of ideological piracy.

This idea that Mormons have that we did not believe in the Trinity until the Nicene council is incorrect. We see it quite clearly, in Christ’s teaching, especially the Gospel of St. John. We see it in the earliest of Christian writings. The Nicene council firmly, and resolutely, in language that is quite clear, describes what all Christians have held as truth, since the beginning. The council’s purpose was to this point, and so this is the point you see most clearly addressed.

It was a response to heresy, and you see such responses from the very beginning. Including to erroneous beliefs by early Christians in the NT. The Church does not exist to create or make up heresies. They come along on their own, and when they do, the Church addresses them. In this case, the Arian heresy is addressed.

What you object to is the language used, and the time period in which the council occurred. You object to philosophical reasoning, yet you employ it yourselves. Seems you only object to it when it comes to describing a central Christian doctrine that clearly places your doctrines as heretical. You fight the truth.

Mainly, throughout that document, you confuse your own beliefs with what Catholics are saying. The Trinity is One God. God the Father is Spirit, God the Son is corporeal, God the Holy Spirit is well, Spirit of course. When we speak of GOD, we understand God has all of these attributes.

It is you who keeps trying to separate them out, and in so doing, you give attributes of the Son to the Father.

 

[RebeccaJ]

You criticize what is to us, a breakthrough in how Christian belief can be explained. It is to us, a development of philosophical thinking which enables us to better express what we have always believed.

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Hi CDude,

So as to avoid ginormous posts, I’ve snipped the quotes below down to the parts that seem most relevant to me. If I missed anything you thought I should respond to, please point it out.

That should be our next topic: “WHAT is God.” I think you are right that how we view “omnipotence” is directly related to that.

We should definitely discuss this when we hit the topic of what God is. Should we do the “creatio ex nihilo” discussion here, and then make a new thread for the next part of the topic? (I just hate to make people wade through hundreds of posts in a single thread.

I don’t understand your point of view, here. Isn’t the historical/cultural background of the scriptures important for understanding their meaning? I thought that’s what the Pontifical Biblical Institute was about, for instance, and in fact I quoted a Catholic scholar who published through there in one of my posts.

I don’t understand why you think this passage must be interpreted as referring to creatio ex nihilo. Here’s the NAB translation, which is easier to read. By faith we understand that the universe was ordered by the word of God, so that what is visible came into being through the invisible.So here it talks about God “framing” or “ordering” the universe

This passage says that Jesus made everthing that was made, as Zerinus already pointed out.

I don’t expect you to accept this point of view based on an argument from authority. I tried to outline some of the evidence these scholars use to make their case, though. I would hope that this evidence carries some weight with you.
“nothing important”? That is a purely relative term. There were piles of matter tossed around the universe as if they were ore deposits? What is “principle of organization”? Was there Oxygen atoms floating around or were they unorganized electrons floating around? If your church is going to have a theological and intellectual foundation to build from it has to be able to address such issues along with the theological ramifications of them. The Catholic Church has already done this through its great thinkers and theologians and makes the theological and philosophical case that “nothing important” regardless of how unimportant is still incompatible with the Nature of God.

I agree. That was my point. These scholars say that the ancients gave no indication whatsoever, that they were using it in an absolute sense when talking about creation. In fact, many texts explicitly say otherwise.

In some of my later posts I discussed some of the Biblical evidence. Paul Dupre seems to agree that creatio ex nihilo might have been a dogma that developed over time. Since Catholics make allowances for “doctrinal development,” ala John Henry Newman, it seems like a good Catholic could hold that position.

LDS view “theology” differently than you might. I’m a scientist, so I’ll use that as an analogy for how we view it. Scientists make observations (collect data) about the world, and then we try to make up explanations for what we see. Afterward, we try to make other observations that our explanations also predict or preclude, in order to test our theories. We never consider any of our theories the “final truth,” because past experience has taught us that it is very likely we will someday make observations that will force us to revise our explanations.

Latter-day Saints approach “theology” in much the same way. Our “data” is revelations from God (in the Bible, etc.) When we “do theology,” we are trying to fit all the data together into sort of a coherent story that explains everything. However, we can’t ever call any of these theological explanations the “final truth,” because it may be that God will reveal something else that will force us to put the puzzle pieces together in a different way to make sense of it all.

Catholics, on the other hand, don’t believe in new public revelation, so “doing theology” takes on much greater significance. So if you want to go off into theological reflections with us, that’s fine, but you should realize that we probably won’t take it as seriously as you do.

So I hope you don’t mind if we follow some other angles, as well. I brought up a historical angle, and Paul Dupre just posted about a scientific angle–Big Bang theory. Earlier you complained that some of the scholars I quoted don’t have any “authority” in either of our traditions, but I think that sort of misses an important point. The entire issue rests on who has the authority to interpret the scriptures, and we can’t agree on that. On the other hand, we all think scholarly and scientific work is useful (although not perfect) for finding out things, so why can’t our discussion be framed around this kind of common ground? We can all make arguments, and we will either find them persuasive, or not.

This thread seems to have run away from me. I will try to catch up later today from post 44.

 

[Benadam]

Hi Ben

It is confusing. Joseph Smith said God had a Father, and most Mormons believe that if there ever was a beginning to the process of eternal lives, we don’t know anything about it. Futhermore, modern physics tells us that time and space are things that can be bent or compressed or dialated. We have no idea how God experiences time and space. How can we possibly know what it’s like to live in the eternal worlds? Would we experience all time–past, present, and future–as one eternal NOW? If that were the case, what would it mean to say that one God came before another? Are there multiple universes, so that we only experience our Father as God? I don’t know…

And the New Testament is clear that the Father created the cosmos *through *Jesus. Does that mean the Father isn’t the Creator? No, for us that just means that God is ONE, so that what one does, the others do, as well. So GOD is the Creator of all, no matter which particular Being did the legwork.

So even though I admit that it’s confusing, I don’t think it’s because our doctrine is contradictory, or anything. It’s just that we’re at the limits, talking about things that are totally beyond human experience. Similarly, Catholics talk about what a great mystery it is that the Trinity is three Persons in one Being. People like me, who don’t believe in that, can complain about how it makes no sense to us, but you just shrug and say that’s because we have limited, human perspectives.

No matter whose theology we’re talking about, I think you always hit this kind of limit, somewhere. But in our case, a lot of the confusion disappears if you can get your head around the fact that we believe that GOD IS ONE. We emphasize the separateness of the Persons way more than you do, however, and that often leads to misunderstanding, because you think of our gods as a bunch of squabbling Viking gods in Valhalla. Even many Mormons don’t understand how deep the ONEness goes, just like many Catholics are modalists, because they don’t understand the separateness of the Persons of the Trinity.

GOD created all that ever was. The specific Persons that did any particular act of creation are not that important to us.

Does that help?

yes it does BDawg, thank you. In my own thoughts I’ve concluded that any person, no matter the number that can claim to have always been exists in that eternity that only God can 'BE"
That leads me to another question though concerning God ascending from human to Godhood. For me this violates the absolute simplicity of God and the changelessness characteristic of eternal life and divine nature.

I guess I’m looking for Mormon thinking on the Origin of the divine progression as I think you call it.

 

[BDawg]

Hi Beccs,

Thanks for your comments. I didn’t mean to imply that those bible passages can only be interpreted one way.

Where it speaks to Christian writings corporeal existence, this is how Christians speak of Jesus. You are not understanding, and as is common with Mormon “scholarship” and Trinitarian ideas, you take ideas out of their contextual meaning and make them your own. A sort of ideological piracy.

No, the discussion was not about the Incarnation. For instance, here’s what Tertullian said about it.

““For who will deny that God is a body, although ‘God is a Spirit?’ For Spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form.” (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 7, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers 3:602.)

I don’t mean to imply that Tertullian had an anthropomorphic concept of God, however. He didn’t. He just believed (as do the LDS) that “spirit” is itself a material substance.

This idea that Mormons have that we did not believe in the Trinity until the Nicene council is incorrect. We see it quite clearly, in Christ’s teaching, especially the Gospel of St. John. We see it in the earliest of Christian writings. The Nicene council firmly, and resolutely, in language that is quite clear, describes what all Christians have held as truth, since the beginning. The council’s purpose was to this point, and so this is the point you see most clearly addressed.

I agree that most Mormons are hopelessly misinformed about the history of the Trinity doctrine, and it’s really naive to think that it just jumped out of nowhere in 325 AD. They ought to read a couple books about it, or keep their traps shut. If you ever see me making that argument, you have permission to virtually pistol whip me.

On the other hand, if you think that the current doctrine of the Trinity was being taught in New Testament times, you have another think coming, too.

John Henry Newman started out as an Anglican, and he wanted to get into the ECFs and such to show that the Anglicans actually held to the doctrines that were always taught from the beginning, while the Catholics had added all sorts of additions (like some doctrines about Mary, the Papacy, etc.) What he found out instead was that even many of the doctrines the Anglicans held to had developed over time. Upon what basis did they reject some developments, but hold to others? Newman came to the conclusion that they had no basis for this, and so he converted to Catholicism, where at least you guys have an argument from continuing authority to justify developments over time. Just before converting, he published his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which is now a classic of Catholic literature. Newman later became a Cardinal.

The point in sharing this story is that the Trinity is one of those doctrines that both Anglicans and Catholics accepted as basic to the faith, but which had clearly undergone quite a bit of “development” over time.

 

[BDawg]

That leads me to another question though concerning God ascending from human to Godhood. For me this violates the absolute simplicity of God and the changelessness characteristic of eternal life and divine nature.

Hi Ben,

Thanks for bringing this up. FYI, most Mormons wouldn’t have a clue what you were talking about when you mentioned the “absolute simplicity” of God, so you should be careful to explain what you mean. I think I understand, though, so I’ll start off by translating for any Mormons reading this. Please correct me if I say something wrong.

The First Vatican Council (1869-1870) defined God as “eternal, immense, incomprehensible,. . . who, being a unique spiritual substance by nature, absolutely simple and unchangeable, must be declared distinct from the world in fact and by essence.”

When Catholics (and other Christians) say that God is “simple,” they mean that the Divine Nature is a completely homogeneous essence. By “completely homogeneous,” I mean that it doesn’t have “parts.” It is completely unified.

This brings up an important difference between the Mormon and Catholic doctrines of God. That is, we both believe the Biblical statements that God is One, but we differ about HOW God is one.

For Catholics, the idea that the Divine Nature is “simple” absolutely rules out the possibility of more than one Divine Being. So when the New Testament says that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (clearly treated as separate entities in the text) are all “God,” Catholics have to conclude that there must be One Divine Being manifested in Three Divine Persons. (Am I doing ok with this explanation, Catholic buddies?)

This is really where the “mystery of the Trinity” lies. That is, how can there be three “persons” comprising a Divine Essence that is completely “simple” (i.e., without parts)? When well informed people attack the Trinity doctrine as being “illogical,” this is exactly where they start.

Mormons, on the other hand, reject the idea of Divine Simplicity. Therefore, we can have any number of of Divine Beings who are “One” in a way that doesn’t require absolute simplicity.

Again, the conflict is not about WHETHER God is One, but HOW. To settle this conflict, maybe we can go to the Bible and find out what it says about HOW God is One. The best I can do is John 17.

“I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.” (John 17:20-23, New American Bible)

Notice that Jesus prayed that his disciples would be 1) one in each other, and 2) one in the Father and Son, AS the Father and Son are one. I take that to mean that whatever kind of unity Jesus intended for his disciples and God was the same as the kind of unity Jesus and the Father share. Maybe there are differences in degree, but not in kind. Clearly, this interpretation throws Divine Simplicity out the window.

“But,” you might say, “Jesus’ comparison was merely metaphorical. There is no way he was saying that humans could be one with each other and God in the same way as the Trinity is One!”

I can understand that interpretation. But if you want to make your case, then you will need to dig out that OTHER Bible passage that explains HOW the Trinity is One. I don’t think you can find one.

So as I see it, our argument is better, because we have a scriptural passage that can easily be interpreted as describing HOW God is One.

But where did this idea that God is “simple” come from, if not from the Bible? Actually, this is one of those things that came straight out of the Greek Philosophical schools, and started becoming commonly accepted in Christianity by the mid-second century. If you don’t believe me, give Christopher Stead’s Philosophy in Christian Antiquity a read. The pagan philosophers all criticized Christianity because, according to their philosophies, the idea of God (who is eternally simple, unchangeable, etc.) could become a man was too funny for words. Christian apologists who were converted philosophers, like Justin Martyr, Athenegoras, and a few others, began arguing that all that stuff in the Bible that seems to indicate that God is anthropomorphic is really allegorical, and Christians really believe that God is just like what the philosophers said. (Luckily they still insisted on keeping the part about the Incarnation.) They had some precedents for this in Judaism, like Philo Judaeus (an Alexandrian Jew contemporary with Jesus.) So, for instance, around 200 AD the Christian writer Tertullian could say,
“Whatever attributes therefore you require as worthy of God, must be found in the Father, who is invisible and unapproachable, and placid, and (so to speak) the God of the philosophers.” (Tertullian, Against Marcion 2:27, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers 3:319.)
(Note: I mentioned before that Tertullian accepted the idea that “spirit,” including God, is a material substance, of a sort. This is what uncultured Jews and Christians would have believed, but it was also consistent with the Stoic school of philosophy. The other schools, especially the Platonists, thought of God as immaterial.)

By the mid-third century, however, Origen complained that many Christians still thought of God in anthropomorphic terms, and objected that the philosophers would think this is silly.
"The Jews indeed, but also some of our people, supposed that God should be understood as a man, that is, adorned with human members and human appearance. But the philosophers despise these stories as fabulous and formed in the likeness of poetic fictions.” (Origen, Homilies on Genesis 3:1, translated by Ronald E. Heine, Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1982, 89.)
So my argument so far in this thread is:

1. The idea that God created matter (creatio ex nihilo) never came up until the Bible was already written (i.e., not until the mid-second century A.D.) The scholarly consensus is on our side, on this one.
2. The Biblical writers, and a lot of Jews and Christians until several centuries after Christ, thought of God as having a body in human form. Lots of evidence and scholarship on our side here, too.
3. The idea that God is an immaterial, eternally unchangeable, simple essence, was adopted into Christian theology from the Greek philosophical schools during the second century. This isn’t controversial in scholarly circles, either.
4. The original, Biblical idea of the Divine Unity was couched in terms familiar to humans–not in terms of “Divine Simplicity.”

I guess I’m looking for Mormon thinking on the Origin of the divine progression as I think you call it.

Joseph Smith seemed to think there was no beginning to it. Maybe we can figure out how that works when we understand how time works? Like I said, this is sort of the limits of LDS theology, where anything we say is beyond normal human experience, anyway.

 

[teancum79]

Christ taught, the Father is spirit.

“God is Spirit” “God is light” “God is love”

These can not mean God is only.

 

[AMDGtoo]

You know, I end up feeling “why even bother?” Even if I suggest that Justin Martyr and Tertullian aren’t the best to quote and that there are other Early Church Fathers quoted in Jurgen’s The Faith of the Early Church Fathers and there is a section referencing all of the Catholic quotes that have led to Catholic doctrine, it’s as if I hadn’t. Quotes from those practicing heresy or those who have been raised pagan are used to show that the Catholics really believe in things about God that they didn’t (and a reading shows that they didn’t.)

Honestly after reading many quotes in both Jurgen’s and others, I noted that the LDS charge that Catholic teachings are pagan in nature (coming from the Greeks) is unfounded. I have, though, noted that there is quite a bit of Gnosticism and Arianism in Mormonism. (Both Gnosticism and Arianism were heresies condemned by the early Church–she indeed was protecting the Faith as the Bible says to do.) Why don’t you all look for yourselves. You don’t even have to purchase the book or read anti-Mormon material. I got the mentioned book (and others) from the public library. So can you all.

 

[BDawg]

Hi A,

Here’s my problem with your argument.

1. You complained that I referenced Tertullian and Origen for early Catholic belief, because you say they turned heretic.
2. But what you neglected to note was that Tertullian and Origen were the ones who AGREED with you guys that God created ex nihilo. I brought up their comments because they said there were lots of other Christians who had believed otherwise. So what are you complaining about?
3. The ones I quoted who taught creatio ex materia were Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria. Both of them are Catholic SAINTS, after all. I understand that doesn’t make them infallible, in your belief, but I don’t understand how you can complain about me quoting them as decent representatives of early Christian belief.
4. I wasn’t trying to force you into believing what I say because of the Catholic authority of the ECFs I was quoting. I was making a historical argument. Catholic historians quote Origen and Tertullian all the time when they make historical arguments about what early Christianity was like. Why else would Father Jurgens have such huge sections on them in his compendium?

You know, I end up feeling “why even bother?” Even if I suggest that Justin Martyr and Tertullian aren’t the best to quote and that there are other Early Church Fathers quoted in Jurgen’s The Faith of the Early Church Fathers and there is a section referencing all of the Catholic quotes that have led to Catholic doctrine, it’s as if I hadn’t. Quotes from those practicing heresy or those who have been raised pagan are used to show that the Catholics really believe in things about God that they didn’t (and a reading shows that they didn’t.)

Honestly after reading many quotes in both Jurgen’s and others, I noted that the LDS charge that Catholic teachings are pagan in nature (coming from the Greeks) is unfounded. I have, though, noted that there is quite a bit of Gnosticism and Arianism in Mormonism. (Both Gnosticism and Arianism were heresies condemned by the early Church–she indeed was protecting the Faith as the Bible says to do.) Why don’t you all look for yourselves. You don’t even have to purchase the book or read anti-Mormon material. I got the mentioned book (and others) from the public library. So can you all.

 

[PaulDupre]

Again, the conflict is not about WHETHER God is One, but HOW. To settle this conflict, maybe we can go to the Bible and find out what it says about HOW God is One. The best I can do is John 17.

“I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.” (John 17:20-23, New American Bible)

Notice that Jesus prayed that his disciples would be 1) one in each other, and 2) one in the Father and Son, AS the Father and Son are one. I take that to mean that whatever kind of unity Jesus intended for his disciples and God was the same as the kind of unity Jesus and the Father share. Maybe there are differences in degree, but not in kind. Clearly, this interpretation throws Divine Simplicity out the window.

“But,” you might say, “Jesus’ comparison was merely metaphorical. There is no way he was saying that humans could be one with each other and God in the same way as the Trinity is One!”

A good, honest attempt. You are one rare Mormon.

As far as your argument goes, you may be missing something that always trips up non-trinitarians. That is that there is more than one sense in which the trinity is “one”.

Since the three persons are one in being (ie: in substance), they really are essentially one. But the family of 3 persons is also “one” in the sense that their wills are perfectly united in love.

We can see this from the John 17 passage you quoted. Since Jesus would not pray for something that was not possible (that the disciples would be one in being), he must have meant something else. Mormons say that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one in purpose. This is correct, though incomplete. Their wills, while truly their own, are so completely united that they function essentially as one divine will.

The goal that Christians have is to die to self, which means that, through God’s grace, we wish to conform our fallen human will to His divine will, leaving our selfish selves behind. All who enter the beatific vision and spend eternity with God will be completely united with His divine will.

We experience true peace and joy in this life only to the extent that we unite our wills with the will of God. When we do this, we are not only united to Him, but to each other in a way that approximates (as far as is possible in this mortal frame) the unity of will that exists among the persons of the trinity. We believe that this is what Jesus prayed for in the garden.

It’s a very Catholic way of looking at it, but I believe that Mormons already have the seeds of understanding this POV.

Paul

 

[BDawg]

As far as your argument goes, you may be missing something that always trips up non-trinitarians. That is that there is more than one sense in which the trinity is “one”.

Hi Paul,

So you are saying that you don’t need to resort to metaphor, because Catholics believe the Trinity is one in the same way Mormons do? It’s just that you ALSO believe that they are one in Being. That’s much better than what I put in Catholic mouths, so thanks for correcting me.

On the other hand, there is still the problem that the Bible never says anything about a “oneness of Being.” As far as I can tell, John 17 is the only place that talks explicitly about the Divine Unity at all.