I am pleased to have engaged in this discussion with Orson Scott Card. I will hope to meet him more personally in the future. It appears that we are not really discussing the same question, however.
My response to the question posed to me remains as it was from the start. Mormonism is not compatible with “traditional Christian orthodoxy.” As a matter of fact, this is the essence of Mormon identity, and Mormon authorities going back to Joseph Smith were quick to separate Mormonism from “traditional Christian orthodoxy” as accepted by the Christian churches.
Indeed, the subtitle printed on The Book of Mormon is “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” A “testament,” that is, other than that accepted by the historic Christian churches.
The debate has never been about whether Mormons are good Americans or would make good neighbors. I dare say that most American Evangelicals and traditional Roman Catholics would find more in common with Mormons in terms of child-rearing, sexual morality, the protection of marriage and family, and a host of other issues, than they would with liberal Catholics or liberal Protestants. No argument there.
The debate is not over Mitt Romney or his right to run for President of the United States. That is a settled constitutional fact – and a fact for which we should all be thankful. Nor is it about whether Evangelicals should vote for Mitt Romney. There is so much to admire in the man’s marriage and family and leadership ability. This question is very complicated – as is the case with almost all political questions.
The debate is not over the right of Mormons to hold their faith, promote their faith, and spread their faith. That, too, is a constitutional right – the same right that protects the religious liberty of all persons of all faiths and no faith.
For me, and as the question was posed to me, the issue is theological. That is why I cannot answer the question except as I have from the start.
Here is the bottom line. As an Evangelical Christian – a Christian who holds to the “traditional Christian orthodoxy” of the Church – I do not believe that Mormonism leads to salvation. To the contrary, I believe that it is a false gospel that, however sincere and kind its adherents may be, leads to eternal death rather than to eternal life.
Indeed, I believe that Mormonism is a prime example of what the Apostle Paul warned the Church to reject – “a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you” [Galatians 1:8-9].
And thus I must end where I began. Mormonism is not just another form of Christianity – it is incompatible with “traditional Christian orthodoxy.”
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No!
But, I am amazed at your lack of honesty and reading comprehension.
http://moelder.freeservers.com
Jesus The Christ is True God and True Man, perfect God and perfect man, fully God and fully man, The Grand Architect Of The Universe, The Light of The World, the PREEXISTING everlasting eternal creator redeemer and sustainer of the cosmos, BEFORE the foundation of any world or Cosmos.
And so you repeat the same old Athenasian Creed. The Bible shows us in numerous instances that God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are separate personages. I could care less what the CREEDS OF MEN have to say about the perceived problem. As I have mentioned Tertullian coined the phrase "Trinity" and when he did he pointed to the separateness of the individuals.
Jesus Christ, while in the Garden of Gethsemane, prayed to the Father (he did not pray to Himself) that His disciples would become one as He and His Father are one. Did he mean for the apostles to all meld into a single substance against all laws of nature? No! He painted the picture that they were to become one in purpose (John 17).
When Jesus hung on the cross he asked the Father why He had forsaken Him? Did He forsake himself?
Jesus' baptism showed three distinct personages: Jesus was present in person, God the Father (not Jesus in a ventriloquist's voice) spoke from the Heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son", and the Holy Ghost descended in the form of a dove. Three distinct personages!
Jesus once made the comment that His Father was greater than He was. He did not say, "I am greater than myself." He said the Father was greater than was HE - John 14:28. (Does this sound like co-equal to you? If one is greater than the other are they co-equal?) The Bible, not the CREEDS OF MEN, holds the truth on the deity. Anyone studying the history of the Church and particularly Athenasius and this time period realizes that what he was attempting to do was please all of the many factions of Christians at this time with a uniform doctrine (which is extremely paradoxical in its very nature). Does God work in paradoxes or is the House of God a House of order?
Can you logically explain these inconsistencies with the Athenasian Creed? Why does the Creed say one thing but the Bible say another?
As for the Pre-existant Christ we have no argument. John 1:1-3 is clear on this point and the Old Testament even tells us that Jesus Christ was Jehovah. The Bible in the original Hebrew makes clear the distinguishment of Jehovah and God the Father in its very word usage. And Psalms 82 tells us about the Divine Council, or the Council of the gods, before the foundations of this Earth. I have studied the Bible in detail in its original languages and so I may be able to shed some light on this for you.
Furthermore, you have accused me of dishonesty. I would like to ask in what have I been dishonest? And then you insult my reading comprehension (even tough I hold an M.A. in linguistics). Edwin, I have not insulted you a single time and yet you come at me with venom. I simply ask you to express the allegations you have made against me and to back up with scripture your position as related to the scripture I have just quoted and correlate them for me. Again, nowhere does the Bible say that God the Father and Jesus Christ are one and the same substance. This, my friend, is a statement written in the non-canonical creeds and not to be found in the Bible.
Just a few things for you to think about, Edwin.
The problem I see here is that Mormons don't understand cannon of the scriptures which teach clearly there is on 1 God. It teaches all other gods are false and that belief in them is sin. The biblical record then establishes over and over again that the son is God the Father is God and The Holy Spirit is God they share the same attributes and they are one which underlines what Christians have believed (THE CHURCH) for 2000 years is that there is a mystery here we understand only what the record reveals and since the Christian church excepts no other books out side the cannon of scripture we need not extend any consideration of any other teaching outside orthodox Christian teaching of which Mormonism is a non Christian cult that arose a 140 years ago and has nothing in common with biblical Christianity other then an extreme effort by morons to want to identify themselves with the term Christian while introducing a false gospel and another Jesus as Jesus warned would come.
First off, Trevor, the Church is now almost 180 years old. Second, If God the Father was God the Son then we would have no need for a mediator between the Father and the Son. Also Jesus clearly said in John 14:28 that the Father was greater than He was.
The following is part of a rather long article that I have written (the full article is available in PDF format at my website
http://logicalsanity.com
Mormons are often accused of hiding their history and doctrines from the general populace of the church, as well as its investigators, out of fear that in breaching the subjects they will drive away the masses. One such doctrine that is highly susceptible to this unwarranted criticism is the revelation given by Joseph Smith detailing the plurality of Gods.
Joseph prefaced a sermon delivered on June 16, 1844 in Nauvoo, Illinois as follows:
“I will preach on the plurality of Gods. I have selected this text for that express purpose. I wish to declare I have always and in all congregations when I have preached on the subject of the Deity, it has been the plurality of Gods. It has been preached by the Elders for fifteen years.
“I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and that the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit, and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods. If this is in accordance with the New Testament, lo and behold! we have three Gods anyhow, and they are plural: and who can contradict it?” (B.H. Roberts, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint. Vol. 6. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book, 1978), 474).
The notion that Latter-day Saints wish to sweep this doctrine under the rug is laughable in all of its aspects. Anyone who has ever entertained the missionaries is aware of this doctrine. It is a doctrine that sets the church apart from all the rest of Christendom and that makes the Church of Jesus Christ unique. Without it the church is no more enlightened than all of the rest of modern apostate Christianity. The doctrine is generally taught in the very first missionary discussion when the missionaries teach the nature of God in the context of Joseph Smith’s first vision:
“…I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me... When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” (The Pearl of Great Price: Joseph Smith History, 1:16,17 (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1989).
From the very beginning Joseph Smith knew and taught that God, the Father, and his Son, Jesus Christ, were two separate and distinct beings. He saw both of them, together, with Jesus standing on the Father’s right hand. So if they are separate beings and God the Father is God and Jesus Christ is God then there are two Gods.
At Jesus’ baptism three distinct personages manifested themselves. Jesus was physically present in the flesh. God, the Father, spoke from heaven declaring Jesus to be His son. The Holy Ghost descended in the form of a dove. Jesus was not a ventriloquist throwing His voice from the heavens and He was not a magician pulling a dove out of thin air. These were distinct manifestations of three separate entities (Mark 1:10,11; Luke 3:22).
However the creeds of men say:
“They are not three Gods, but one God… And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another. But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal. So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped” ( Athanasius, The Athanasian Creed, 1:16, 25-27).
“We believe … in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only begotten, that is, of the substance of the Father; God of God; Light of light; very God of very God; begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father… ” (The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the FathersDown to A.D. 325, Vol. 7. trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Edinburgh: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1886), 524).
Tertullian, who coined the term “Trinity” and was one of the ante-Nicene fathers of the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries A.D., agreed with Joseph Smith and those Nicene and post-Nicene fathers who came after him distorted the true interpretation and meaning of the word. The term “Trinity” was originally coined in response to a false doctrine being circulated by Praxeas (whom Tertullian called a heretic) who taught the Godhead in the same manner in which Athanasius and the council of Nice later taught it. Praxeas taught the sameness of the Father and the Son to which the author of the original definition of the “Trinity” replied:
“My assertion is that the Father is one, and the Son one, and the Spirit one, and that They are distinct from Each Other… Happily the Lord Himself employs this expression of the person of the Paraclete, so as to signify not a division or severance, but a disposition (of mutual relations in the Godhead); for He says, “I will pray the Father, and He shall send you another Comforter…even the Spirit of truth,” thus making the Paraclete distinct from Himself, even as we say that the Son is also distinct from the Father; so that He showed a third degree in the Paraclete, as we believe the second degree is in the Son, by reason of the order observed in the Economy. Besides, does not the very fact that they have the distinct names of Father and Son amount to a declaration that they are distinct in personality?”
“So it is either the Father or the Son, and the day is not the same as the night; nor is the Father the same as the Son, in such a way that Both of them should be One, and One or the Other should be Both,—an opinion which the most conceited “Monarchians” maintain. He Himself, they say, made Himself a Son to Himself. Now a Father makes a Son, and a Son makes a Father; and they who thus become reciprocally related out of each other to each other cannot in any way by themselves simply become so related to themselves, that the Father can make Himself a Son to Himself, and the Son render Himself a Father to Himself... Now all this must be the device of the devil—this excluding and severing one from the other—since by including both together in one under pretence of the Monarchy, he causes neither to be held and acknowledged, so that He is not the Father, since indeed He has not the Son; neither is He the Son, since in like manner He has not the Father: for while He is the Father, He will not be the Son…
“It will be your duty, however, to adduce your proofs out of the Scriptures as plainly as we do, when we prove that He made His Word a Son to Himself. For if He calls Him Son, and if the Son is none other than He who has proceeded from the Father Himself, and if the Word has proceeded from the Father Himself, He will then be the Son, and not Himself from whom He proceeded. For the Father Himself did not proceed from Himself. Now, you who say that the Father is the same as the Son, do really make the same Person both to have sent forth from Himself (and at the same time to have gone out from Himself as) that Being which is God” (The Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, Vol. 3. ed. Allan Menzies (Edinburgh: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1886), 604-05).
The Bible tells us that these Divine Beings are neither one in substance (material) nor coequal. It is clear that God, the Father, is ultimately in charge for he sent Jesus Christ to Earth to redeem mankind and Jesus followed the order.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:16,17).
There are several great truths in this verse, two of which debunk the claims of the Athanasian and Nicene Creeds. 1) Jesus is not coequal with God the Father inasmuch as God the Father “sent” His son to the Earth, and 2) Jesus Christ and God the Father are two separate and distinct personages as shown in the very act of “begetting”. These two principles are later born out once more when Jesus declares, “I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). Again, Jesus is not going unto Himself and He sets a distinct hierarchy of the Gods.
There are some Protestant faiths, or at least the clergy of these faiths, that do understand the separate nature of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as evidenced by the following in “Morning Star,” a weekly newsletter of Wycliffe College, by Alan L. Hayes, director of the Toronto School of Theology:
“It seems to me preferable for a number of reasons to say clearly that YHWH is (at least in his appearances to human beings) Christ himself — that is, not God the Father, but God the Son.
“The pre-eminent reason for saying so is that, when we pray to God, we do so ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ Our trinitarian theology affirms that the only access which any human being can have to God the Father is through the Son. ‘No one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’ If the Father appeared and spoke to Moses in the burning bush; if he communicated directly to the prophets; if he was worshipped by Israel without the necessity of a mediator, then the Church’s doctrine of the Trinity is mistaken. …
“The idea of Christ’s divinity [as it related to Monarchism and the modern Orthodox conception of the Trinity] and the doctrine of the Trinity were added in later centuries by the ascetic Greek philosophers who by then had taken control of the Church” [brackets mine] (Alan L. Hayes, “YHWH isn’y God the Father, after all,” Wycliffe College Morning Star,” November 13, 2006, 1-3).
Just as Jesus was sent by the Father the third member of the Godhead is sent by Jesus Christ, through permission of the Father, again setting up a divine hierarchy, “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me” (John 15:26).
But what of the scriptures that say they are one?
“I and my Father are one” (John 10:30).
“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one” (1 John 5:7).
Besides the fact that 1 John 5:7 in the original Greek, as well as in the Latin Vulgate, only says, “That there are three witnessing,” and excludes the remainder of the verse that was later introduced by a Trinitarian believing monk, (Bart D. Ehrman. From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity: Lecture 23, The Doctrine of the Trinity. Compact disc. The Teaching Company. 6577. 2004). The scriptures must agree in harmony of doctrine if they are to be believed. One verse cannot cancel out another and so it is necessary to discover what this “oneness” signifies since the scriptures are clear that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are distinct and separate individuals.
The best explanation of this “oneness” comes from the Bible and from John himself as he details Jesus’ prayer for His disciples:
“Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one” (John 17:20-23).
Jeff Benner, of the Ancient Hebrew Research Center, explains this concept of “oneness” as it relates to the Hebrew mind. After all, Jesus and John were both Hebrew and their thought processes would be those of the Middle Easterner of 2000 years ago.
“The Western mind sees ‘one’ as a singular, void of any connection to something else. For instance, ‘one’ man is an individual entity to himself, just as ‘one’ tree is an entity to itself. To the ancient Hebrew Eastern mind, nothing is ‘one’; all things are dependent upon something else. A man is not ‘one,’ but a unity of body, mind and breath that is expressed in the Hebrew word 'nephesh'. The man is also in unity with his wife and family as well as with the larger community. Even a tree is a unity of roots, trunk, branches and leaves, which is also in unity with the surrounding landscape. ‘One’ year is a unity of seasons. The first use of the word ‘ehhad' [– one]) is found in Genesis 1:5 where ‘evening and morning,’ two states of opposite function, are united to form ‘one’ day.” Therefore, Mr. Benner suggests that the Hebrew word translated as “one” would be better translated as “unity” (Jeff A. Benner, His Name is One: An Ancient Hebrew Perspective of the Names of … God. (College Station, TX: Virtualbookworm.com Publishing, Inc, 2003), 23).
This makes perfect sense when the context of Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is considered. It would be quite impossible and ridiculous to assume that Jesus wanted all of his disciples to meld into one substance. As Joseph Smith said when explaining the incomprehensibility of such a notion, “All are to be crammed into one God, according to sectarianism. It would make the biggest God in all the world. He would be a wonderfully big God—he would be a giant or a monster.” So, according to the Bible, the author of the term “Trinity”, and an expert in the field of ancient Hebrew thought and lexicon, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one God in unity and purpose but are three Gods in person and individuality each with their own distinct place within the hierarchy of the Gods. If this were not the case, as Alan Hayes of Toronto School of Theology puts it, there would be no need for a mediator.
The dispute between the concept of Godhead and Trinity then comes down to semantics. If the term “Trinity” is used as Tertullian used it, meaning three separate and distinct individuals that are united in one purpose, the end result being to bring about our everlasting salvation, then there is no contradiction of terms. Godhead also has this definition. However, if the term “Trinity” is used as Athanasius defined it, three beings melded into one substance but manifesting Himself in three different forms, then this is Monarchism and was decried as heresy in the ante-Nicene church, being an invention of later Greek philosophers and not having any biblical support.
Therefore, Joseph Smith was quite correct in affirming three separate individuals, each with the title of God, making three Gods individually and one God, or Godhead, united in purpose. Thus, there is a plurality of Gods.
So Trevor, now why don't you explain the canon of scripture to me, which I have read and studied extensively in the original languages the the scripture was written in and be sure to explain the extra-canonical teaching of the creeds that "orthodox" Christianity has come to revere more than the scripture itself. And be sure to fully explain all of the scriptures that show the indivdualness of the Godhead. I'll be anxiously awaiting your instruction.
Please finish your commentary - so, why do you think Mormons are not Christain?
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