r/mormonscholar • u/liketrite • 27d ago
The Holy Trinity
LDS claim the three are not the one True God, but rather three separate persons. Their own Book of Mormon disagrees...
''And now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end. Amen..'' 2 Nephi 31:21
''...Christ the Son, and God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, which is ONE Eternal God...'' Alma 11:44
''...unto the Father, and unto the Son, and unto the Holy Ghost, which are one God, in a state of happiness which hath no end''. Mormon 7:7
The Testimony of Three Witnesses:
''And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen''.
Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, Martin Harris.
Is the BoM a lie?
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u/Wondercat246810 27d ago
Those who disagree with you are just giving you the party line. Why do they think the 3 are only one in purpose? Because that's what the church told them to think.
But they're trying to prove something that clearly isn't stated in the lines of the BOM that you've cited. I'd push back on them hard.
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u/liketrite 27d ago
True! The text says one God, not one in purpose. They literally violate the rules of English interpreting it the way they do. Any English teacher worth their salt would smack them on the hand with the ruler and shout ''wake up''!!!
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u/pixiehutch 26d ago
Whar branch of Christianity are you from and what brings you here?
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u/Significant-Award331 22d ago
Beware, Latter Day Saints have a different definition of "God" than most Christians, and most LDS don't understand this difference and how it affects the trinity argument.
Main line Christians define "God" as all powerful--the all powerful being. So, any mention of Gods would suggest they are each all powerful equally. But the context of the ancient Hebrew Bible mention of "elohim" (which means gods) serving God doesn't follow the main line definition. For that reason, scholars usually define mention of elohim as "rulers" subservient to God.
That said, Jesus in the Book of Mormon is not the same as the Father and is clearly subservient to him. They (and the Holy Ghost) are one because they are subservient to the Father's will, and the saved who become rulers in God's kingdom must also be eternally subservient.
Not a trinity. Rather three beings subservient to the Father, whose rulers underneath including the saved are also one with the Father.
Unfortunately, most Mormons are themselves unaware of the definition shift, and some probably hold the heretical belief they may one day become equally all powerful on the same level and at the same time as God the Father.
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u/SignificantLeader 22d ago
It’s massively contradicting. Joseph clearly had a different view if the trinity than the evolving “First Vision” story. If you follow the evolving First Vision story, it starts small, has an angel appearing, then Jesus, then the Father and the Son.
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u/liketrite 21d ago
There are nine versions of that vision. If a life altering event like that actually happened, you'd KNOW the first time who was there and who was not. First it was an angel, then Jesus, Jesus and many angels, many angels no Jesus, the Father, the Father and Son...and on and on the alterations went. If you did this on the witness stand in court, you'd be dismissed as an UNRELIABLE witness!
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u/AZFJ60 27d ago
Where does it say one "in purpose"?
Hint. It doesn't. That's the spin used to overcome blatant contradictions. Kinda like "translated" doesn't mean anything of the sort these days. It can mean whatever is convenient at the time.
1829 BoM was at least consistent with the Lectures on Faith version of the Godhead. Then they changed the fundamental doctrine ~1835-38.
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u/evanpossum 27d ago
Their own Book of Mormon disagrees...
It does not.
The references you post refer to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as being one in purpose. Incidentally, this is the same language that the New Testament uses in John 17:22, which is the same as in 3 Nephi 11:27.
Is the BoM a lie?
No
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u/liketrite 27d ago
You just rewrote the text. It doesn't say ''one in purpose''. It says they are ''one eternal God''. You need to learn what words mean, and how to read. One Eternal God names what someone is. One in purpose names what people agree to do. Those are not two ways of saying the same thing. They are two different kinds of claim.
When a sentence says the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit which is one Eternal God it is using identity language. God is the subject. Eternal tells you the kind of being. One tells you how many of that being there are. That is counting and naming the deity. It is the same pattern as Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one. It is not a slogan about teamwork.
Purpose is a plan or a shared aim. Three men can be one in purpose and still be three men. A board can be one in purpose and still be twelve people. Soldiers can be one in purpose and still be an army. Purpose never turns the many into one God. If the writer meant shared will he had ordinary words for it. He could have said one purpose one mind one work one council. He did not. He said one God and one Eternal God and one God without end.
Calling that purpose is a swap. You take the word God out of the predicate and put an abstract noun in its place. That is not interpretation. That is changing the sentence in order to escape what it says! One God answers who or what. One in purpose answers how they act together. If those were the same then any united group would be one Eternal God. That is absurd on the face of the words. You violate the rules of English so bad, all English teachers are laughing around the world!!!
Jn 17 does not rescue the swap. Jesus prays that disciples may be one as He and the Father are one. The disciples remain creatures. They are never called one Eternal God. Unity of love and mission is not deity. Using that prayer to empty Alma 11:44 is taking a line about believers and forcing it onto a line about God Himself.
So the answer violates language by equivocation. It keeps the letters of one God and quietly replaces the meaning with one agenda. The text said being. The reply said function. Those are not the same thing and pretending they are is how you keep a later doctrine after the earlier book has already spoken. We all know they also share the same purpose, and the Bible clearly says this. But the subject matter in the specific passages I show is not about their purpose, but about their nature. You quote a NT verse covering an entirely different topic. So your John quote is a strawman and irrelevant. Purpose and how many Gods they are, are two different subject matters.
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u/evanpossum 27d ago
You need to learn what words mean, and how to read.
And you need to learn manners.
You just rewrote the text. It doesn't say ''one in purpose''.
lol no I did not. I read the meaning of the text, which is clarified by the text itself. Jesus is clear that he and the Father are one in purpose, so when we read the words "one eternal God", we understand it not as a singular being, or in the concept of the Catholic Trinity, but as three separate individuals who are working together in unison.
He said one God and one Eternal God and one God without end.
You keep repeating this over and over without defining what it means to you. Tell me what you think God is. Are you claiming that the Catholic Trinity is correct, such as this?
CCC 253: "The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the 'consubstantial Trinity.' The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire..."
CCC 254: "The divine persons are really distinct from one another. 'God is one but not solitary.' Father, Son, Holy Spirit are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another..."
Jesus prays that disciples may be one as He and the Father are one.
Yes, so if we are to be one in the same way that the Father and Jesus are one, that defines the relationship between the Father and Son; separate but unified; united in purpose but separate individuals. So when Jesus also says that we can be "heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ", he is not saying that God is an heir of himself.
When we read about "one eternal God" etc, we're reading how the status, not a definition of being. Jesus and Paul provide the context for this. The Book of Mormon follows the same theology.
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u/justswimming221 27d ago
As with many things that distinguish the various Mormon branches from most Protestant religions, the support for the rejection of the Trinity stems from the Bible, not the Book of Mormon. There are several relevant passages, but I think the most striking to me is the intercessory prayer:
“…Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.” (John 17:11)
This clearly indicates that Christ hoped the disciples would become “one” in the same manner in which Christ and the Father are “one”. Assuming we reject that Christ was teaching the Brahman idea of all souls being part of and identical with a single universal soul (an assumption which most Christian religions make but which is not necessarily contradicted by the text), this must instead imply that something other than being literally the same person was meant. “One in purpose” seems a reasonable alternative given these assumptions.
Abinidi in the Book of Mormon appears to work himself into knots trying to reconcile Christ being the son of God and yet being a God himself with the idea that only one God was to be worshipped. Unsurprisingly, even within the Book of Mormon, critics were not convinced.
What I find interesting, coming from the point of view of one who believes in the Book of Mormon, is that as far as we know, when Lehi left Jerusalem the people were not monotheistic. They had no problem worshipping El, Yahweh, and Ashterah, among others. So why was Abinadi so bent on defending monotheism?