The Nature of God in Mormonism.

[BDawg]

Hi guys,

Back in Post #115, I noted that the original Christian Christology had “the Word” inhabiting a human body in place of a regular soul. I argued that the idea that God is an incorporeal, eternally unchanging, simple essence (as Christians started believing in the 2nd century) is incompatible with the idea that Jesus is REALLY a man. That’s why Christian theologians changed their Christology to a “two natures, two wills” scenario over the next several centuries. On the other hand, I argued that if the Divine Nature is generically similar to human nature–e.g., the Mormons believe that gods, angels, and humans are all gradations of the same species–then the Word could inhabit a human body, and Jesus would still be TRUE GOD and TRUE MAN, just like the New Testament teaches.

So my argument was that Spirit Christology was pretty clearly the original Christian teaching, and the Mormon definition of God is compatible with that, while the Catholic/philosophical definition of God is not. In this post I’m going to point out another thing that was pretty clearly the earliest Christian teaching about the nature of God. It is, once again, compatible with the LDS definition of God, but not compatible with the Catholic/philosophical definition of God.

Problem #2: Early Christian Subordinationism

If Jesus is REALLY God, and “God” is an eternally unchanging and simple essence, then there can’t be any talk of inequality within God. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost must be “co-equal” in every way, except with respect to their relations to one another. (Even that is a little questionable, considering what Divine Simplicity is supposed to mean.)

But that’s demonstrably NOT what the earliest Christians believed. Oh, they believed Jesus was REALLY God all right–Phillippians 2 is a good case in point. But they believed that the Father was GREATER THAN the the Son in both rank and glory. Jesus said, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), and claimed that only the Father knows the hour of Christ’s Second Coming (Matthew 24:36). Paul wrote that the Father is “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 15:6, New English Bible) and that after the resurrection Jesus will “be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” (1 Corinthians 15:24–28)

Now, my Catholic pals here are squirming, and they can’t wait to type a reply that says, “But those passages are talking about Jesus’ HUMAN nature!” Remember that the “two natures” Christology wasn’t even talked about until the third century (I believe it was Origen who was the first on record.) And if there is one thing that is clear about early Christian beliefs, it is that Subordinationism (the idea that the Son and Spirit are subordinate to the Father in rank and glory) was the earliest Christian teaching. The Anglican patristics scholar, R.P.C. Hansen, observed, “Indeed, until Athanasius began writing, every single theologian, East and West, had postulated some form of Subordinationism. It could, about the year 300, have been described as a fixed part of catholic theology.” (R.P.C. Hansen, “The Achievement of Orthodoxy in the Fourth Century AD,” in Rowan Williams, ed., The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honor of Henry Chadwick, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 153.)
Commenting on Origen’s beliefs, another patristics scholar, Henry Bettenson, noted that “‘subordinationism’ . . . was pre-Nicene orthodoxy.” (Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers, London: Oxford University Press, 1956, 330.)

This is very non-controversial in the scholarly literature. Even AMGDtoo’s favorite Source Of All Patristic Knowledge, Father Jurgens , has something to say about this. Jurgens quotes St. Justin Martyr (around 150 AD) saying,
"We reverence and worship Him and the Son who came forth from Him and taught us these things, and the host of other good angels who are about Him and are made quite like Him, and the Prophetic Spirit.” (Justin Martyr, First Apology 6, in William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1970, 1:51.)
Father Jurgens commented in the footnote that Justin
“apparently [made] insufficient distinction between Christ and the created Angels,… [and there] are theological difficulties in the above passage, no doubt. But we wonder if those who make a great deal of these difficulties do not demand of Justin a theological sophistication which a man of his time and background could not rightly be expected to have.” (Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, 1:56, n. 1.)
[You see, AMGD? I wasn’t joking when I said that Jurgens is a lot more “interesting” if you read his books all the way through, instead of flipping back and forth from the doctrinal index.]

Notice that Father Jurgens didn’t think it was a big deal for Justin to hold such opinions in the mid-second century.

Justin Martyr also wrote that Jesus was “another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things; who is called an Angel, … distinct from Him who made all things—numerically, I mean, not [distinct] in will.” He also wrote that the Son is “in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third.” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 56, in ANF 1:223, brackets in original; First Apology 13, in ANF 1:167.)

The Greek text translated “another God” is actually something like deuteros theos (I’m going from memory, so the exact word forms may be wrong,) meaning “a second god.”

The famous Episcopalian patristics scholar, Robert M. Grant, thinks that in these passages Justin may have been influenced by the Jewish Christian prophet, Hermas, who lived in Rome about the same time as Justin. (Robert M. Grant, The Early Christian Doctrine of God, Charlottesville, Virginia: University Press of Virginia, 1966, 81.) Hermas spoke of “the angel of the prophetic Spirit” and Jesus as the “glorious … angel” or “most venerable … angel.” (The Pastor of Hermas, Commandment 11, in ANF 2:27–28; Jean Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, translated by John A. Baker, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964, 123–124.)

So Jesus was thought to be just an angel by the early Jewish Christians? Well, remember how I said that for Mormons, gods, angels, and humans are all gradations of the same species? It was pretty much the same kind of thing for many early Jewish Christians. For instance, the most extensive early Jewish Christian writings preserved outside of the New Testament are the Pseudo-Clementine writings. (These have a bunch of stories about the exploits of Clement of Rome and Peter.) In the Clementine Homilies, Peter says,
“Learn this also: The bodies of men have immortal souls, which have been clothed with the breath of God; and having come forth from God, they are of the same substance, but they are not gods.” (Clementine Homilies 16:16, in ANF 8:316.)
Before the fourth century, phrases such as “of one substance” or “of the same substance” implied a generic unity of species, meaning something like “made of the same kind of stuff.” In other words, you could say that all horses are “of one substance” (See Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 234–235; Christopher Stead, Divine Substance, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977, entire book; Christopher Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 160–172.)

So in early Jewish Christian theology, the Father could really be “greater than” the Son, but the same kind of Being. Jesus could be a “second god,” but also an angel. He could really be a man.

When, in the second century, a philosophical definition of God began to be popular among Christians, this kind of “Angel Christology” couldn’t last, if Jesus was going to remain “true God and true man.” But to accommodate the new definition of God, a number of different forms of Subordinationism were adopted. Some Christians (like the Sabellians) rejected Subordinationism in favor of Modalism (the belief that there is only one Divine Person, who appears to us in different "modes.) Aside from the Sabellians, they were all Subordinationists, though. Anyway, some of them thought of Jesus as sort of an “emanation” from the Divine Substance. Some of them (like the Arians) figured that Jesus must be a “creature,” meaning something created out of nothing, rather than something derived from the immutable Divine Substance.

Even the Council of Nicea didn’t get rid of Subordinationism. Remember how “of one substance” (homoousios) originally meant “the same kind of thing”? Well, it still did to most Christians at the Council. So when the creed said the Son is “of one substance” with the Father, all they were doing was saying that Jesus wasn’t a “creature” like Arius was claiming. The three main parties at the Council were the Arians, Athanasius’s group (who claimed the Persons of the Trinity were co-equal,) and what J.N.D. Kelly called “the great, conservative ‘middle party,’” who believed “there are three divine hypostases, separate in rank and glory but united in harmony of will.” (Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 247-248.)

It wasn’t till a few councils later that Subordinationism was finally quashed.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

I think the Trinity is just about impossible to understand.
When Jesus was dying on the Cross, who was he talking to?
Himself? No, he was talking to the Father. If the Father and he are one, then where was God? On the Cross or somewhere else?
I mean, I understand the divine nature of Jesus, but I still think that the Trinity is really really hard to understand.

 

[zerinus]

I think the Trinity is just about impossible to understand.
When Jesus was dying on the Cross, who was he talking to?
Himself? No, he was talking to the Father. If the Father and he are one, then where was God? On the Cross or somewhere else?
I mean, I understand the divine nature of Jesus, but I still think that the Trinity is really really hard to understand.

That depends on whose “Trinity” you are talking about. It is not correct to say that LDS do not believe in the Trinity. They do, but they define it differently. There is more than one definition of the Trinity. There is one definition, for example, that includes subordinations, and one that doesn’t—neither of which are LDS. The LDS definition of the Trinity teaches that there are three distinct and separate personages; three separate beings that can stand side by side, and you can look at them, and see that they are separate beings. You won’t have that kind of problem with that definition of the Trinity.

zerinus

 

[majick275]

Hi guys,

Back in Post #115, I noted that the original Christian Christology had “the Word” inhabiting a human body in place of a regular soul. I argued that the idea that God is an incorporeal, eternally unchanging, simple essence (as Christians started believing in the 2nd century) is incompatible with the idea that Jesus is REALLY a man. That’s why Christian theologians changed their Christology to a “two natures, two wills” scenario over the next several centuries. On the other hand, I argued that if the Divine Nature is generically similar to human nature–e.g., the Mormons believe that gods, angels, and humans are all gradations of the same species–then the Word could inhabit a human body, and Jesus would still be TRUE GOD and TRUE MAN, just like the New Testament teaches.

only if you accept the mormon definition of “God” as an exalted man. the word can inhabit a mortal body easily. God is omnipotent and he chose to have the person Jesus inhabit one thus uniting the divine essence with the created. that particular miracle is essential because that is HOW he gave us the resurrection and the “atonement”. he restored what was broken in the garden so that those of us whom he chooses can enjoy the eternal life that he desires for us.

So my argument was that Spirit Christology was pretty clearly the original Christian teaching, and the Mormon definition of God is compatible with that, while the Catholic/philosophical definition of God is not.

which i will disagree with

In this post I’m going to point out another thing that was pretty clearly the earliest Christian teaching about the nature of God. It is, once again, compatible with the LDS definition of God, but not compatible with the Catholic/philosophical definition of God.

Problem #2: Early Christian Subordinationism

If Jesus is REALLY God, and “God” is an eternally unchanging and simple essence, then there can’t be any talk of inequality within God. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost must be “co-equal” in every way, except with respect to their relations to one another. (Even that is a little questionable, considering what Divine Simplicity is supposed to mean.)

correct!

But that’s demonstrably NOT what the earliest Christians believed. Oh, they believed Jesus was REALLY God all right–Phillippians 2 is a good case in point. But they believed that the Father was GREATER THAN the the Son in both rank and glory. Jesus said, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), and claimed that only the Father knows the hour of Christ’s Second Coming (Matthew 24:36). Paul wrote that the Father is “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 15:6, New English Bible) and that after the resurrection Jesus will “be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” (1 Corinthians 15:24–28)

Now, my Catholic pals here are squirming, and they can’t wait to type a reply that says, “But those passages are talking about Jesus’ HUMAN nature!” Remember that the “two natures” Christology wasn’t even talked about until the third century (I believe it was Origen who was the first on record.) And if there is one thing that is clear about early Christian beliefs, it is that Subordinationism (the idea that the Son and Spirit are subordinate to the Father in rank and glory) was the earliest Christian teaching. The Anglican patristics scholar, R.P.C. Hansen, observed, “Indeed, until Athanasius began writing, every single theologian, East and West, had postulated some form of Subordinationism. It could, about the year 300, have been described as a fixed part of catholic theology.” (R.P.C. Hansen, “The Achievement of Orthodoxy in the Fourth Century AD,” in Rowan Williams, ed., The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honor of Henry Chadwick, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 153.)
Commenting on Origen’s beliefs, another patristics scholar, Henry Bettenson, noted that “‘subordinationism’ . . . was pre-Nicene orthodoxy.” (Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers, London: Oxford University Press, 1956, 330.)

stop before it becomes a straw man… the dual nature while relevant isn’t required. we have NT quotes where jesus equates himself with the father as well. we can’t casually disregard the monotheistic pronouncements from the OT either. but i will offer up that the “subordination” was TEMPORARY in the incarnation as Jesus CHOSE to humble himself and literally live AS a man during that time period. thus while he was in the flesh he subordinated himself. i will also appeal to the creedal argument that as he is eternally begotten and proceeds FROM the father that there is a matter of semantics that may well be beyond the literary abilities of these early writers to distinguish. (that’s not really subordination but it could be confused with it)

This is very non-controversial in the scholarly literature. Even AMGDtoo’s favorite Source Of All Patristic Knowledge, Father Jurgens , has something to say about this. Jurgens quotes St. Justin Martyr (around 150 AD) saying,
"We reverence and worship Him and the Son who came forth from Him and taught us these things, and the host of other good angels who are about Him and are made quite like Him, and the Prophetic Spirit.” (Justin Martyr, First Apology 6, in William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1970, 1:51.)
Father Jurgens commented in the footnote that Justin
“apparently [made] insufficient distinction between Christ and the created Angels,… [and there] are theological difficulties in the above passage, no doubt. But we wonder if those who make a great deal of these difficulties do not demand of Justin a theological sophistication which a man of his time and background could not rightly be expected to have.” (Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, 1:56, n. 1.)
[You see, AMGD? I wasn’t joking when I said that Jurgens is a lot more “interesting” if you read his books all the way through, instead of flipping back and forth from the doctrinal index.]

i think jurgens “overthinks” this. justin’s words on the surface don’t “require” us to see jesus as being on the same level as angels. this really seems to be overemphasizing the word “other”.

Notice that Father Jurgens didn’t think it was a big deal for Justin to hold such opinions in the mid-second century.

Justin Martyr also wrote that Jesus was “another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things; who is called an Angel, … distinct from Him who made all things—numerically, I mean, not [distinct] in will.” He also wrote that the Son is “in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third.” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 56, in ANF 1:223, brackets in original; First Apology 13, in ANF 1:167.)

The Greek text translated “another God” is actually something like deuteros theos (I’m going from memory, so the exact word forms may be wrong,) meaning “a second god.”

now here i think we are back on track for your previous point. I see Justin trying to describe the relationship of the trinity in what words were available to him. i fall back on my previous statements about the creedal view. the son proceeds form the father, the holy spirit form both. that doesn’t render them unequal but it can be confusing as we are trying to describe the start point in a circle.

 

[majick275]

continued

The famous Episcopalian patristics scholar, Robert M. Grant, thinks that in these passages Justin may have been influenced by the Jewish Christian prophet, Hermas, who lived in Rome about the same time as Justin. (Robert M. Grant, The Early Christian Doctrine of God, Charlottesville, Virginia: University Press of Virginia, 1966, 81.) Hermas spoke of “the angel of the prophetic Spirit” and Jesus as the “glorious … angel” or “most venerable … angel.” (The Pastor of Hermas, Commandment 11, in ANF 2:27–28; Jean Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, translated by John A. Baker, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964, 123–124.)

So Jesus was thought to be just an angel by the early Jewish Christians? Well, remember how I said that for Mormons, gods, angels, and humans are all gradations of the same species? It was pretty much the same kind of thing for many early Jewish Christians. For instance, the most extensive early Jewish Christian writings preserved outside of the New Testament are the Pseudo-Clementine writings. (These have a bunch of stories about the exploits of Clement of Rome and Peter.) In the Clementine Homilies, Peter says,
“Learn this also: The bodies of men have immortal souls, which have been clothed with the breath of God; and having come forth from God, they are of the same substance, but they are not gods.” (Clementine Homilies 16:16, in ANF 8:316.)

i think you read into this a distinctly mormon viewpoint that isn’t there. these are people who see the learned speaking in term s of Hellenistic philosophers trying to describe divine concepts that they themselves don’t fully comprehend yet.

Before the fourth century, phrases such as “of one substance” or “of the same substance” implied a generic unity of species, meaning something like “made of the same kind of stuff.” In other words, you could say that all horses are “of one substance” (See Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 234–235; Christopher Stead, Divine Substance, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977, entire book; Christopher Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 160–172.)

So in early Jewish Christian theology, the Father could really be “greater than” the Son, but the same kind of Being. Jesus could be a “second god,” but also an angel. He could really be a man.

only in the sense that man was made “in the IMAGE of God”. now in the case of the incarnation the lines blur a bit since God and Man are joined in the person of Jesus Christ.

When, in the second century, a philosophical definition of God began to be popular among Christians, this kind of “Angel Christology” couldn’t last, if Jesus was going to remain “true God and true man.” But to accommodate the new definition of God, a number of different forms of Subordinationism were adopted. Some Christians (like the Sabellians) rejected Subordinationism in favor of Modalism (the belief that there is only one Divine Person, who appears to us in different "modes.) Aside from the Sabellians, they were all Subordinationists, though. Anyway, some of them thought of Jesus as sort of an “emanation” from the Divine Substance. Some of them (like the Arians) figured that Jesus must be a “creature,” meaning something created out of nothing, rather than something derived from the immutable Divine Substance.

this is significant. you point out early heresies as “evidence” of prevailing thought. these various heresies were never accepted as dogma. catholic doctrinal development requires that positions taken in the deposit of faith can never be reversed. we can say “we don’t know but we THINK” on subjects (like limbo) and yet not be in the area of binding doctrine. councils that define doctrine cannot “reveal” or “establish” new doctrine. they can only clarify which of the many views in the case of confusion is correct. the can provide a more detailed explanation but when they declare something as dogma they are stating that this has ALWAYS been the official position of the church. (and yes sometimes the church didn’t realize until then but once again no position can be reversed)

Even the Council of Nicea didn’t get rid of Subordinationism. Remember how “of one substance” (homoousios) originally meant “the same kind of thing”? Well, it still did to most Christians at the Council. So when the creed said the Son is “of one substance” with the Father, all they were doing was saying that Jesus wasn’t a “creature” like Arius was claiming. The three main parties at the Council were the Arians, Athanasius’s group (who claimed the Persons of the Trinity were co-equal,) and what J.N.D. Kelly called “the great, conservative ‘middle party,’” who believed “there are three divine hypostases, separate in rank and glory but united in harmony of will.” (Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 247-248.)

It wasn’t till a few councils later that Subordinationism was finally quashed.

i think i addressed the seeming subordination of the filioque.

 

[BDawg]

i think you read into this a distinctly mormon viewpoint that isn’t there. these are people who see the learned speaking in term s of Hellenistic philosophers trying to describe divine concepts that they themselves don’t fully comprehend yet.

I’m not sure what you mean, Maj. In the Clementine Homilies, look how else Peter describes God.

And Simon said: “I should like to know, Peter, if you really believe that the shape of man has been moulded after the shape of God.” And Peter said: “I am really quite certain, Simon, that this is the case . . . . It is the shape of the just God.” (Clementine Homilies 16:19, in ANF 8:316.)

For He has shape, and He has every limb primarily and solely for beauty’s sake, and not for use. For He has not eyes that He may see with them; for He sees on every side, since He is incomparably more brilliant in His body than the visual spirit which is in us, and He is more splendid than everything, so that in comparison with Him the light of the sun may be reckoned as darkness. Nor has He ears that He may hear; for He hears, perceives, moves, energizes, acts on every side. But He has the most beautiful shape on account of man, that the pure in heart, may be able to see Him, that they may rejoice because they suffered. For He moulded man in His own shape as in the grandest seal, in order that he may be the ruler and lord of all, and that all may be subject to him. (*Clementine Homilies *17:7, in ANF 8:319-320.)
Like I said before, anthropomorphism was the standard interpretation in early Judaism and Jewish Christianity. In the quotation you were complaining about, Peter went on to explain that human souls are “of the same substance” as the Father. Read Christopher Stead’s book, Divine Substance, or even the few pages from Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines, and you will see that I am not taking any liberties in interpreting the phrase “of the same substance.”

this is significant. you point out early heresies as “evidence” of prevailing thought. these various heresies were never accepted as dogma. catholic doctrinal development requires that positions taken in the deposit of faith can never be reversed. we can say “we don’t know but we THINK” on subjects (like limbo) and yet not be in the area of binding doctrine. councils that define doctrine cannot “reveal” or “establish” new doctrine. they can only clarify which of the many views in the case of confusion is correct. the can provide a more detailed explanation but when they declare something as dogma they are stating that this has ALWAYS been the official position of the church. (and yes sometimes the church didn’t realize until then but once again no position can be reversed)

I understand that, Maj. I have tried to be very careful to allow that Catholics have looked at all this stuff, and can explain it via their ideas about “doctrinal development.” However, when it is clear that the earliest Christian thought was more in line with LDS thought in important ways, don’t expect me not to point that out!

i think i addressed the seeming subordination of the filioque.

I wasn’t talking about the filioque. I was talking about the fact that most Catholic theologians at the Council of Nicea interpreted the *homoousion *as saying that Jesus is “made of the same kind of stuff” as the Father, but not that he was equal in rank and glory with the Father. They were Subordinationists, and that was the standard position at the time.

 

[BDawg]

only if you accept the mormon definition of “God” as an exalted man. the word can inhabit a mortal body easily. God is omnipotent and he chose to have the person Jesus inhabit one thus uniting the divine essence with the created. that particular miracle is essential because that is HOW he gave us the resurrection and the “atonement”. he restored what was broken in the garden so that those of us whom he chooses can enjoy the eternal life that he desires for us.
which i will disagree with
correct!

But some of the earliest ECFs I quoted said that the Word inhabited his human body just like a regular human soul. I never said that contemporary Catholics believe that. I said that the earliest ECFs said lots of stuff exactly like that. And I quoted the standard one-volume handbook on patristic doctrine (Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines) in support of this interpretation.

stop before it becomes a straw man… the dual nature while relevant isn’t required. we have NT quotes where jesus equates himself with the father as well. we can’t casually disregard the monotheistic pronouncements from the OT either. but i will offer up that the “subordination” was TEMPORARY in the incarnation as Jesus CHOSE to humble himself and literally live AS a man during that time period. thus while he was in the flesh he subordinated himself. i will also appeal to the creedal argument that as he is eternally begotten and proceeds FROM the father that there is a matter of semantics that may well be beyond the literary abilities of these early writers to distinguish. (that’s not really subordination but it could be confused with it)

Maj, I understand the idea of “functional” vs. “ontological” subordination. But once again, I was talking about what the ECFs taught before 300 AD. And once again, I quoted standard patristics references in support of my position.

i think jurgens “overthinks” this. justin’s words on the surface don’t “require” us to see jesus as being on the same level as angels. this really seems to be overemphasizing the word “other”.

Father Jurgens isn’t the only one who interprets this passage that way. Robert M. Grant (a famous patristics scholar who used to be the editor of the journal, Church History) said,
“This passage presents us with considerable difficulties. The word ‘other,’ used in relation to the angels, suggests that Jesus himself is an angel.” (Grant, The Early Christian Doctrine of God, Charlottesville, Virginia: University Press of Virginia, 1966, 81.)

now here i think we are back on track for your previous point. I see Justin trying to describe the relationship of the trinity in what words were available to him. i fall back on my previous statements about the creedal view. the son proceeds form the father, the holy spirit form both. that doesn’t render them unequal but it can be confusing as we are trying to describe the start point in a circle.

Why on earth would an orthodox Trinitarian call Jesus “Angel,” and “second god”? Why would he define the Unity of the Father and Son as a unity of “will”? Justin was a converted Platonist philosopher–no uneducated hack. If he wanted to say what you are trying to squeeze out of him, he jolly well could have done a better job!

 

[majick275]

i still see absolutely no evidence of mormon doctrine on deity in any of the references that you have provided. as far as the semantics of contemporary translations from such old sources of greek, latin, etc. i can certainly see room for error. i also believe the educated of that time to be more likely to speak in symbolic terms as they were trying to educate the illiterate. I also see absolutely no dogmatic statements in any of your references that show your interpretation of subordination. The bible itself shows co-equality and the same time as it’s voluntary subordination by Christ. I have to believe that any ECF writings are speaking to that same temporary, voluntary subordination during the incarnation. obviously it will take me awhile to go over your recommended reading and do this justice but that’s my start point.

 

[Benadam]

I understand that, Maj. I have tried to be very careful to allow that Catholics have looked at all this stuff, and can explain it via their ideas about “doctrinal development.” However, when it is clear that the earliest Christian thought was more in line with LDS thought in important ways, don’t expect me not to point that out!

BDawg, you know that the concepts the Greeks apprehended and the Christians adopted originated from the revelation received by Moses? Early Christians said things like " He was made a little lower than angels " implication being that His original state is higher. " Iam that I am’ " the same yesterday , today and tomorrow" are definitive statements about Gopd that just doesn’t allow for a God that ascended from the earth. Actually you concept of the Father is much like our concept of a Saint. Excluding of course a universe to rule…I think:

I wasn’t talking about the filioque. I was talking about the fact that most Catholic theologians at the Council of Nicea interpreted the *homoousion *as saying that Jesus is “made of the same kind of stuff” as the Father, but not that he was equal in rank and glory with the Father. They were Subordinationists, and that was the standard position at the time.

“Everything the Father has He gives to the Son”…This is a statement of equality. It doesn’t mean that the Father doesn’t generate the Son because He does, the Fatrher is true Father and the Son is true Son. But one must acknowledge the ungeneratedness of the Father as something greater that the generatedness of the Son. This does not speak to equality because in human dignity humans are equal but in that father’s generate sons they are to be honored by them as commanded by God.

The eternal bond goes like:

The Father eternally generates cognizance of Himself. This is His Word who is a true Son through eternal generation. Only the Son knows the Father and only the Father knows the son.

no need to respond I’m enjoying the conversation I just had to throw that in:blush:

 

[xixxvmcm85]

I think this is a critical issue to discuss because, from what I understand, Mormons hold a radically different understanding of God than Catholics do.

The topic of this thread is pretty broad, I think it should be narrowed down, and I think as this thread goes on a few key issues will arise.

To get this started:
One of the most critical issues is the notion of creation and how God creates, especially when it comes to creating humans.
The biggest difference I can see between Catholic concept of creation “ex nihilo” (from nothing) in contrast to the Mormon concept of creation “ex materia” (from pre-existing material/matter).

For Catholics the concept of something, anything, existing before God created it is heresy. Because God is Almighty He cannot, by definition, have something existing along side Himself which He did not create and maintain in existence.
I’m not sure how Mormons answer this, but I will leave it up to them to continue from here.

(The topic of the Nature of God is broad and open to other issues besides creation and Almighty, however I don’t want this turning into a flame thread, hit and run, cheap shots, etc. In other words terms like “magic plates,” “Smith is a conman,” “14 year old girl,” etc, etc should NOT appear in this thread. If you have something “bold” to say, try to make sure you have an LDS source to quote.)

I’m new to this thread so I don’t know if someone already corrected you on this, if so I beg your pardon (I don’t have the patience to read through 10 pages of posts)…

You seem to be confusing Jesus for God in Mormonism (remember that Mormons are not trinitarians and as such believe that God the Father and God the Son are two completely separate people of separate substance).

For this reason, it is incorrect to say that Mormons believe in “creation ex materia” at least in the way to which you are alluding.

God the Father (or as Mormons in the Temple call him, Elohim) creating everything (and for you physicists out there, he also created every non-thing).

In Mormonism it was Jesus Christ (or as he was known in his pre-existence: Jehovah) and “the Archangel Michael AKA Adam the first man” who were commanded by God the father to go down and organize the matter that Elohim created into the planets, stars, orbiting systems, galaxies, etc that we see today.

 

[Catholic_Dude]

I’m sorry, but this just kills me, guys. We always get hammered here about how the Book of Mormon calls Jesus “the Eternal God,” or the Father has been God “from eternity to eternity,” but we believe the Father was once a man, etc. I don’t completely understand all that, and I try to defend it by saying that we don’t understand how God sees time, and it might be that the eternities are like one, eternal NOW, but that kind of explanation gets pretty much ignored. And yet, you guys use the exact same explanation for some things in your own theology!

If I had a nickel for every time (just in the last few days) I’ve seen someone here fret about how “illogical” this aspect of Mormon theology is, I’d be a rich man. The truth is that both Mormons and Catholics have points at the edge of their theologies where it gets very hard to talk about what it all means in human terms, because it is totally outside human experience.

I apologize if this has already been mentioned 100 times, I am behind in my reading and responses but I just had to comment on this one.

There is a real and very significant difference here which we Catholics are trying to get across is that we believe God being omnipotent He transcends time, He existed “before” time itself existed. He created time. When Mormons use “eternal” (especially with the idea God was once a man) they are seeing this as if God was stuck within the confines of time (like all of us) and that the time line extends backwards into infinity. When Catholics use the term “eternal” and “everlasting” and such we mean God is OUTSIDE of time, outside of creation, He cannot and does not change and this is due to being outside of time.

Imagine a simple time line. Mormons have God somewhere on that time line, even if it was infinite years ago. Catholics have God separated from that time line, God is NOWHERE on the time line. Because God transcends time He can operate within time without having to be confined by it. JESUS entered into that time line on a specific date, and in a unique way, He took on human nature. He, as God, still continued to transcend time, but He as a human was subject to the laws of time (growing up).

Now, we as creatures cannot comprehend what a situation with no time (or outside of time) would be, but by God’s grace we can envision the possibility and logic of such a thing and how that directly fits with God’s omnipotence and immutability (100% unchangeable and perfect, no “room” to grow, learn, or devolve).

 

[PaulDupre]

For this reason, it is incorrect to say that Mormons believe in “creation ex materia” at least in the way to which you are alluding.

God the Father (or as Mormons in the Temple call him, Elohim) creating everything (and for you physicists out there, he also created every non-thing).

You’re dead wrong, and most of your fellow LDS here will be glad to tell you so. Many of us here are former active LDS now Catholic and we also know whereof we speak.

The consistent LDS teaching is that all matter, energy and intelligences are co-eternal. Elohim was not always a god but was once an intelligence and then a spirit child of his heavenly father and then a mortal man who lived on an earth much like ours and was exalted by obedience to his god, so how could he possibly have created everything that already existed before he was exalted?

P.S.: You should have read through the thread.

 

[xixxvmcm85]

You’re dead wrong, and most of your fellow LDS here will be glad to tell you so. Many of us here are former active LDS now Catholic and we also know whereof we speak.

The consistent LDS teaching is that all matter, energy and intelligences are co-eternal. Elohim was not always a god but was once an intelligence and then a spirit child of his heavenly father and then a mortal man who lived on an earth much like ours and was exalted by obedience to his god, so how could he possibly have created everything that already existed before he was exalted?

P.S.: You should have read through the thread.

1. I’m no longer LDS, rather I’m a Catholic Catechumen, so I have no “fellow LDS”.
2. Elohim indeed was once a man, per LDS theology, however in a different universe. It is understood in LDS circles that Elohim created the matter for THIS universe, and commissioned his son “Jehovah” to organize the matter.

I take it you’ve never taken out your Temple Endowments. Had you done so, you’d know what I’m talking about.

P.S: If an current LDS has posted something that negates what I’ve stated, please cite it for me for I have no clue what it is I’d be looking for.

 

[PaulDupre]

1. I’m no longer LDS, rather I’m a Catholic Catechumen, so I have no “fellow LDS”.
2. Elohim indeed was once a man, per LDS theology, however in a different universe. It is understood in LDS circles that Elohim created the matter for THIS universe, and commissioned his son “Jehovah” to organize the matter.

I take it you’ve never taken out your Temple Endowments. Had you done so, you’d know what I’m talking about.

P.S: If an current LDS has posted something that negates what I’ve stated, please cite it for me for I have no clue what it is I’d be looking for.

Of course I took out my endowments. I served a mission in Taiwan and was married in the temple. I attended the temple many times. I recall nothing in the endowment that specifies that Elohim progressed to godhood in another universe. But if you can point out the passage in the endowment, I will gladly accept correction.

I apologize that we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. My bad. But if you hang around for a while and dialog with LDS, you’ll see why I sometimes get a bit testy.

God love you,
Paul

 

[xixxvmcm85]

Of course I took out my endowments. I served a mission in Taiwan and was married in the temple. I attended the temple many times. I recall nothing in the endowment that specifies that Elohim progressed to godhood in another universe. But if you can point out the passage in the endowment, I will gladly accept correction.

I apologize that we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. My bad. But if you hang around for a while and dialog with LDS, you’ll see why I sometimes get a bit testy.

God love you,
Paul

No problem. I understand your frustration with the “LDS Back-door approach to conversation”. Shoot, having both been missionaries I’m sure both of us have engaged in a little bit of it. (And having only been here not more than a couple months, I’ve seen some of the Mormon regulars reduce themselves to such).

It is never explicitly stated in the Endowment that “Elohim” progressed to godhood in another universe/world, though it can be logically deduced:

If “Elohim” is commanding Jesus and Adam to go and organize the matter in this universe as to make a hospitable environment for human beings, obviously “Elohim” couldn’t have lived his mortal life in this universe (prior to it being “organized”).

---

ETA:

I guess on second thought I was a bit hasty in jumping to my “logical conclusion” as I just thought of another possibility for how the matter for the universe(s) came to be.

Quite possibly, if there is a theoretical “first God” who is the God of the God of the God of the God of the God… of Elohim, maybe this primitive God created all the universes with all the matter and is homesteading them to the “exalted beings”?



Ugh. Enough with the confusing theology… I’m off to go break the Word of Wisdom :coffeeread:

 

[PaulDupre]

Quite possibly, if there is a theoretical “first God” who is the God of the God of the God of the God of the God… of Elohim, maybe this primitive God created all the universes with all the matter and is homesteading them to the “exalted beings”?

homesteading!!!

 

[Catholic_Dude]

I understand. I don’t mean to try to force anything down your throat. I’m just trying to make the best argument I can for my position. And if the scholarly stuff doesn’t carry much weight with you, maybe it will with someone else, so I won’t make a big deal about it if we can’t agree on an interpretation of things.

It doesn’t because it turns into my scholar can beat up your scholar. Conservative Catholic and Protestant scholars would not say creation ex nihilo is not found in Scripture or in early Christian thought.

The proposal you make would be as fair as if I went to the leading secular archaeologists who said there is no historical or archaeological basis for the Mormon civilizations. Mormon scholars would not agree with that assessment.

The evidence from 2 Enoch was very clear that they thought “the invisible” was not absolute nothingness, at least.

That 2 Enoch quote was questionable, and I noted my reservations because of the fact it was not a full quote (it had “…”) and not to mention my reading of it I saw what could clearly be evidence for ex nihilo.

Hi CDude,
I never said there are degrees of omnipotence. I said there are degrees of glory. The Bible is full of texts that talk about doing such and such “for the glory of God,” or giving glory to God. What’s the point of that, if He already has all possible glory?

Giving glory to God is for the sake of creatures, not for God (who already holds all glory). A creature giving glory to God means they are growing spiritually and acting in the way God wants them to. When someone gives glory to God they are acknowledging the truth but at that moment they are acknowledging it on a higher level. When a person whitnesses a miracle and gives glory to God they are in fact saying “wow, God really is that amazing!”

Omnipotence and having all Glory go hand in hand. Jesus was glorified only so far as He went from a passable human (able to suffer, die, etc) to an impassable one (glorified body, incapable of pain, death, etc) at the Resurrection.

Z and I both already said that the Mormon view of “omnipotence” is more limited than yours. Some things just aren’t possible for anyone or anything, so they can’t be included in a definition of “all power.”

Why is it impossible to create and sustain material in existence? Is there really stuff that God has no control over?

Also, this isn’t about the idea that matter just sits there while God is active, I could be holding a pile of dirt in my hand which just sits there, I could do multiple things with that dirt, but the dirt is not under my complete power (I can’t create or destroy it, I can’t even fully escape it, etc).

When Catholics say X is impossible for God it is only because X is self-contradictory for God. It is impossible for God to, for example, tell a lie because a lie contradicts His Nature of being life giving and source of Truth.

I hope this isn’t going to devolve into a “my God is bigger than yours” argument. The argument should be about who has the correct definition.

But isnt the “bigger” God obviously the more correct one?
One that can create material out of nothing is objectively superior to one who cannot.

Hi again, CDude,

The philosophers were the greatest critics of the pagan pantheons. They thought the whole business of gods fighting against each other, having romps in the hay with stray humans, etc., was silly. That’s why their thought was so easily co-opted into Christian and Jewish theology. There really were significant similarities. Anyway, here is a quotation from Plutarch, a Neoplatonist who flourished in the early Christian period.Socrates and Plato held that (God is) the One, the single self-existent nature, the monadic, the real Being, the good: and all this variety of names points immediately to mind. God therefore is mind, a separate species, that is to say what is purely immaterial and unconnected with anything passible. (Plutarch, quoted in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 14:16, translated by E.H. Gifford, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1903, 812.)
Here’s another one from Numenius, who was a Middle Platonist.But let no one laugh, if I affirm that the name of the incorporeal is “essence” and “being.” And the cause of the name “being” is that it has not been generated nor will be destroyed, nor is it subject to any other motion at all, nor any change for better or for worse; but is simple and unchangeable, and in the same idea, and neither willingly departs from its sameness, nor is compelled by any other to depart. (Numenius, quoted by Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 11:10, p. 566._

Catholics are fully aware that there were great non-Christian thinkers who managed to rise above the purely carnal realm of thinking. Notice that it was the more intelligent ones who recognized (though imperfectly) the eternal Truths. Truth is Truth no matter where it is found. If you want to advocate polytheism and mutability and such that is co-opting more with the masses than the great thinkers.

Before the Incarnation, we believe Jesus was God, but had not yet inherited “all power in heaven and earth” in himself.

Im not sure what this means.

For Catholics we understand the “all power in heaven and earth” to mean Jesus going from the role of a servant to that of total King (with His now Glorified human body). It does not mean Jesus’ Godhood changed in any way.

Hi guys,

One of the great tragedies (from my perspective) of the Christian adoption of a philosophical definition of God and creatio ex nihilo was that it put everything into two categories: 1) God, who is uncreated in any sense, completely “other” than any other nature, and 2) everyone and everything else, who are created in every sense. This caused all kinds of problems for Christian theology that never came up when people believed in an anthropomorphic God. In my next few posts, I’ll highlight some of these problems.

I see a major problem with your hypothesis, besides the ones we have already covered.

Catholics say all matter is good, that is because it comes from the source of all good, God. Evil is the corruption and abusing of God’s creation. Mormons cannot say all matter is good because they would be saying something is good apart from God’s goodness. At most they could only say it is “neutral”, which would preclude the idea of a truly good creation because neutral is not equal to good.

Problem #1: The Incarnation
The New Testament is clear that Jesus is really God, and *really a man. *I think we can all agree on that, at least. But how is that possible if the Divine Nature is completely other than human nature?

In one sense it is a great mystery that is beyond the grasp of our finite minds, on the other end it is not a contradiction because creation takes up space and bound to time while the Divine nature does not.

After a few centuries, Christians (at least most of them) settled on the idea that Jesus actually had two natures: the Divine Nature, and a complete human nature–both a body and human soul. But like I said, this took a few centuries to work out! How did the earliest Christians view the Incarnation?

Yes it took some time to work out because this revelation was so radical that it took some time to land. The earliest Christians accepted what they could to the best of their comprehension. As time went on, especially when persecutions stopped, these issues were pondered more and by God’s grace fuller understandings came about.

You above admit Jesus is truly God and man, now do you think this is something that is explained simply and easily? Werent you the one who said you arent sure if God the Father had a Father? You cant expect full and immediate comprehension of great Mysteries (mystery in Christianity means something we can only partly grasp due to its infiniteness and our finiteness)

J.N.D. Kelly, a famous Oxford patristics scholar, wrote that the first Christians had what he called a “Spirit Christology.”

Some other examples of “Spirit Christology” include statements by St. Hipploytus of Rome, St. Ignatius of Antioch, and St. John.

There is nothing wrong with either of those quotes you gave.

But if the Word was just like a spirit inside a human body, how could Jesus really be human? If “God” is an eternally unchanging, simple essence, that’s a big problem. Eusebius of Caesarea put it this way in the 4th century.

It is a “problem” on so far as we can’t fully comprehend how. Even you admit Jesus is God and man, you are now forced to offer your own explanation. The hard part is to explain it without diminishing the reality of the Divine or Human.

None of us believes that was really the message of the New Testament, but I think the Gnostics had a good point. That is, the philosophical definition of God as an eternally unchanging, simple essence is not really compatible with the Incarnation, if the Incarnation consisted of the Word inhabiting a human body. And yet, that’s exactly how all the earliest Christians seem to have viewed the Incarnation!

Thats where the “scandal” of the incarnation and the cross comes in. When faith and divine revelation are excluded from the equation these teachings become absurd and even silly.

My conclusion is that the philosophical definition of God is simply wrong. When Christians adopted it, they had to eventually change how they viewed the Incarnation

You havn’t proven anything though, in fact you are now left explaining these same issues. You can’t equate philosophy with “bad,” or “wrong.”

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Hi guys,

Back in Post #115, I noted that the original Christian Christology had “the Word” inhabiting a human body in place of a regular soul. I argued that the idea that God is an incorporeal, eternally unchanging, simple essence (as Christians started believing in the 2nd century) is incompatible with the idea that Jesus is REALLY a man. That’s why Christian theologians changed their Christology to a “two natures, two wills” scenario over the next several centuries. On the other hand, I argued that if the Divine Nature is generically similar to human nature–e.g., the Mormons believe that gods, angels, and humans are all gradations of the same species–then the Word could inhabit a human body, and Jesus would still be TRUE GOD and TRUE MAN, just like the New Testament teaches.

So my argument was that Spirit Christology was pretty clearly the original Christian teaching, and the Mormon definition of God is compatible with that, while the Catholic/philosophical definition of God is not. In this post I’m going to point out another thing that was pretty clearly the earliest Christian teaching about the nature of God. It is, once again, compatible with the LDS definition of God, but not compatible with the Catholic/philosophical definition of God.

Problem #2: Early Christian Subordinationism

If Jesus is REALLY God, and “God” is an eternally unchanging and simple essence, then there can’t be any talk of inequality within God. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost must be “co-equal” in every way, except with respect to their relations to one another. (Even that is a little questionable, considering what Divine Simplicity is supposed to mean.)

But that’s demonstrably NOT what the earliest Christians believed. Oh, they believed Jesus was REALLY God all right–Phillippians 2 is a good case in point. But they believed that the Father was GREATER THAN the the Son in both rank and glory. Jesus said, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), and claimed that only the Father knows the hour of Christ’s Second Coming (Matthew 24:36). Paul wrote that the Father is “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 15:6, New English Bible) and that after the resurrection Jesus will “be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” (1 Corinthians 15:24–28)

Now, my Catholic pals here are squirming, and they can’t wait to type a reply that says, “But those passages are talking about Jesus’ HUMAN nature!” Remember that the “two natures” Christology wasn’t even talked about until the third century (I believe it was Origen who was the first on record.) And if there is one thing that is clear about early Christian beliefs, it is that Subordinationism (the idea that the Son and Spirit are subordinate to the Father in rank and glory) was the earliest Christian teaching. The Anglican patristics scholar, R.P.C. Hansen, observed,“Indeed, until Athanasius began writing, every single theologian, East and West, had postulated some form of Subordinationism. It could, about the year 300, have been described as a fixed part of catholic theology.” (R.P.C. Hansen, “The Achievement of Orthodoxy in the Fourth Century AD,” in Rowan Williams, ed., The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honor of Henry Chadwick, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 153.)
Commenting on Origen’s beliefs, another patristics scholar, Henry Bettenson, noted that “‘subordinationism’ . . . was pre-Nicene orthodoxy.” (Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers, London: Oxford University Press, 1956, 330.)

This is very non-controversial in the scholarly literature. Even AMGDtoo’s favorite Source Of All Patristic Knowledge, Father Jurgens , has something to say about this. Jurgens quotes St. Justin Martyr (around 150 AD) saying, "We reverence and worship Him and the Son who came forth from Him and taught us these things, and the host of other good angels who are about Him and are made quite like Him, and the Prophetic Spirit.” (Justin Martyr, First Apology 6, in William A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1970, 1:51.)
Father Jurgens commented in the footnote that Justin “apparently [made] insufficient distinction between Christ and the created Angels,… [and there] are theological difficulties in the above passage, no doubt. But we wonder if those who make a great deal of these difficulties do not demand of Justin a theological sophistication which a man of his time and background could not rightly be expected to have.” (Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, 1:56, n. 1.)
[You see, AMGD? I wasn’t joking when I said that Jurgens is a lot more “interesting” if you read his books all the way through, instead of flipping back and forth from the doctrinal index.]

Notice that Father Jurgens didn’t think it was a big deal for Justin to hold such opinions in the mid-second century.

Justin Martyr also wrote that Jesus was “another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things; who is called an Angel, … distinct from Him who made all things—numerically, I mean, not [distinct] in will.” He also wrote that the Son is “in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third.” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 56, in ANF 1:223, brackets in original; First Apology 13, in ANF 1:167.)

The Greek text translated “another God” is actually something like deuteros theos (I’m going from memory, so the exact word forms may be wrong,) meaning “a second god.”

The famous Episcopalian patristics scholar, Robert M. Grant, thinks that in these passages Justin may have been influenced by the Jewish Christian prophet, Hermas, who lived in Rome about the same time as Justin. (Robert M. Grant, The Early Christian Doctrine of God, Charlottesville, Virginia: University Press of Virginia, 1966, 81.) Hermas spoke of “the angel of the prophetic Spirit” and Jesus as the “glorious … angel” or “most venerable … angel.” (The Pastor of Hermas, Commandment 11, in ANF 2:27–28; Jean Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, translated by John A. Baker, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964, 123–124.)

So Jesus was thought to be just an angel by the early Jewish Christians? Well, remember how I said that for Mormons, gods, angels, and humans are all gradations of the same species? It was pretty much the same kind of thing for many early Jewish Christians. For instance, the most extensive early Jewish Christian writings preserved outside of the New Testament are the Pseudo-Clementine writings. (These have a bunch of stories about the exploits of Clement of Rome and Peter.) In the Clementine Homilies, Peter says,“Learn this also: The bodies of men have immortal souls, which have been clothed with the breath of God; and having come forth from God, they are of the same substance, but they are not gods.” (Clementine Homilies 16:16, in ANF 8:316.)
Before the fourth century, phrases such as “of one substance” or “of the same substance” implied a generic unity of species, meaning something like “made of the same kind of stuff.” In other words, you could say that all horses are “of one substance” (See Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 234–235; Christopher Stead, Divine Substance, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977, entire book; Christopher Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 160–172.)

So in early Jewish Christian theology, the Father could really be “greater than” the Son, but the same kind of Being. Jesus could be a “second god,” but also an angel. He could really be a man.

When, in the second century, a philosophical definition of God began to be popular among Christians, this kind of “Angel Christology” couldn’t last, if Jesus was going to remain “true God and true man.” But to accommodate the new definition of God, a number of different forms of Subordinationism were adopted. Some Christians (like the Sabellians) rejected Subordinationism in favor of Modalism (the belief that there is only one Divine Person, who appears to us in different "modes.) Aside from the Sabellians, they were all Subordinationists, though. Anyway, some of them thought of Jesus as sort of an “emanation” from the Divine Substance. Some of them (like the Arians) figured that Jesus must be a “creature,” meaning something created out of nothing, rather than something derived from the immutable Divine Substance.

Even the Council of Nicea didn’t get rid of Subordinationism. Remember how “of one substance” (homoousios) originally meant “the same kind of thing”? Well, it still did to most Christians at the Council. So when the creed said the Son is “of one substance” with the Father, all they were doing was saying that Jesus wasn’t a “creature” like Arius was claiming. The three main parties at the Council were the Arians, Athanasius’s group (who claimed the Persons of the Trinity were co-equal,) and what J.N.D. Kelly called “the great, conservative ‘middle party,’” who believed “there are three divine hypostases, separate in rank and glory but united in harmony of will.” (Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 247-248.)

It wasn’t till a few councils later that Subordinationism was finally quashed.

The issue of this thread isn’t really about Christological heresies. The fact is there are theological teachings that are hard to explain without compromising the Truth. Heresies are nothing more than someone trying to oversimplify a Truth which is ultimately a Mystery. People can give various explanations, some heretical, some merely sub-satisfactory, some very satisfactory. This thread shouldn’t turn into an ECF or historian quote war.

 

[Catholic_Dude]

That depends on whose “Trinity” you are talking about. It is not correct to say that LDS do not believe in the Trinity. They do, but they define it differently. There is more than one definition of the Trinity. There is one definition, for example, that includes subordinations, and one that doesn’t—neither of which are LDS. The LDS definition of the Trinity teaches that there are three distinct and separate personages; three separate beings that can stand side by side, and you can look at them, and see that they are separate beings. You won’t have that kind of problem with that definition of the Trinity.

zerinus

Except that your answer is naked polytheism. And there are clear passages of Scripture saying there is one God, and “three gods with one purpose/will” type language doesn’t cut it because gods (plural) is already used.

And, also redefining traditional Christian terms like Trinity to mean something else. A Mormon should never go around (at least around Christians) saying they believe in the Trinity.

 

[RebeccaJ]

And, also redefining traditional Christian terms like Trinity to mean something else. A Mormon should never go around (at least around Christians) saying they believe in the Trinity.

This would be a hallmark of Mormonism, and the reason why any Christian who investigates Mormonism should first learn how traditional Christian terms are defined by Mormons.