It’s Monday.
I have been studying Isaiah 48 for Wednesday night’s inductive study.
Oh my. Oh my. My fingers trembled with excitement tracing the words of verse 16 – the beautiful and clear Triad in the work of salvation.
Come ye near unto me, hear ye this, I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me.
I bow down in joy.
This Monday encounter with the Triune God (one eternal Light) of Isaiah breaking through the gross darkness makes me question Joseph’s visitation with his Gods (separate lights).
In Joseph’s visitation from his Gods, which one of them makes the Isaianic claim, “There is no God beside me”? Does one of the gods point to the other as the more authoritative Light?
We must all give glory and worship and pray only to the One who points to Himself for the hope of mankind’s salvation and who proclaims emphatically, unequivocally, and universally to all, “There is none else.”
This God is my only hope as a sinner, as “a transgressor from the womb” (Isaiah 48:8).
Jesus in Idaho Falls 
We’ve already explained this Todd. If you didn’t catch it the first time, there’s no point rehashing it.
Seth, let me see if I have caught it.
LDS say the Father is Yahweh. The Father is a higher authority over the Son, and the most High who declares, “There is no other God beside me.” The Son is Yahweh only in the sense of divine investiture. LDS worship and pray to the Heavenly Father, the one greater in glory, calling him God.
Would that be an accurate restatement for LDS in 2008, Seth? A simple yea or nay will suffice. I must confess, it is difficult for me to catch on because I do hear a lot of different LDS explanations of God and Gods.
And I still have not caught . . .
1. How LDS deal uniformly with all the OT and NT scriptural data on Yahweh.
2. How LDS can worship a separate god and representative of Yahweh, the Son, and not be idolatrous because of the exclusive demands in scripture given by the one and only God.
(Sigh)
I don’t get into philosophy. I would just like to see an LDS scholar get radically biblical and seek to harmonize all the scriptural data on the one God to be worshipped.
I don’t know how one can use the Bible for giving the freedom to fully heart worship more than one God.
____
There are so many verses in the biblical scripture that never get talked about by living LDS prophets and apostles in the West. Of course, this only heightens the excitement over the treasure trove of truth written down by God’s prophets and apostles in the scripture about God.
What a grand adventure!
“Does one of the gods point to the other as the more authoritative Light?”
Does a Father have more authority than a son?
How can you keep missing the point. Two, or even three, personages does not make two or three gods. Christ did say that he and the father are one:
If we have seen him we have seen the Father which is in heaven. He prayed that we could be one in him as he is one in the father. How can you devide this God from itself. It is a unit. As a team works together each doing their job they achieve their goal, so does the Godhead. 3 beings work in the way they have authority and power to acomplish their goal. This is the most simplist way I know how to put it. God the Father, His Begotten Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, make the Godhead or simply put God. They each have differing duties and abilities, but together they are all God.
The light you speak of, do you mean the light of christ which enlightenith all man?
Todd, the Godhead for Mormons is one God. It all depends upon whether you are speaking of God in their unity or their persons.
It’s an equivocation if you speak in your sense of the unity of God and then compare it with us to the persons. The only way you could legitimately do this is if you deny the persons in the Trinity within your own position. (i.e. there is nothing but the unity) Since even Trinitarians believe we can draw distinctions between the persons it seems quite unfair to deny Mormons the same right. So it seems to me that either you don’t understand your own doctrine of the Trinity or else are applying a double-standard.
Now it’s undeniable that Mormons emphasize the persons more than the unity. Just as it’s undeniable that most in the Trinitarian position emphasize the unity vastly over the revelation of the different persons.
But if you wish to criticize Mormon doctrine you have to turn to the more esoteric philosophical positions.
As to how to deal with Jehovah passages of scripture there is no unanimity as to what person is being discussed. (I’m not sure there is in the Trinitarian theology either I should note) What we can say is that regardless of what person is being referenced the unity is always being referenced.
BTW – if you want the LDS theology of light check out D&C 93.
One light. The Father in the Son and the Son in the Father who are One.
To add, the Trinity, which many Mormons reject, is one theory about the ontology of the unity of the persons. Now if you adopt the Trinity you’re adopting a certain range of ontologies. However that is properly a separate issue from the unity/plurality within God.
The big differences between Mormons and mainstream Christians is (1) we reject creation ex nihilo and thus the ontological gap between creator and creature; (2) we allow for more than 3 persons in the unity; (3) we might disagree over the properties of the persons. (Mormons can be seen to add more properties – although one can always point out that the properties of the persons Augustine gives shouldn’t be seen as exhaustive)
Now where Mormon doctrine is undefined is over what constitutes the unity. Is it some metaphysical substancec? Is it merely shared ideas, values, knowledge, and goals? Is it an interprenetrating set of perfect relations? Mormonism simply doesn’t specify this and so it presumably is left to the individual to think about.
But it most emphatically is Mormon doctrine that there is an unity which leads to the persons being One God.
#4-6 – extremely helpful for me. Thanks, Clark.
So the One LDS God inclusively and clearly defined is much, much more than the Three? (I was picking this up from Blake’s first book.)
So why is there a bowing down in worship to one being in the Unity of the Godhead and not another?
I bow down to the One God (one Yahweh)- Father, Son, and Spirit – in heart worship and prayer and submission and service. The Trinity is unique; there are no human analogies (even earthly father and son illustrations) that fully describe the Triune God. No earthly father or son will ever be worshipped because they will never ever be the One God.
And I find LDS not considering this to be absolute for Christian orthopraxy. Too contra to latter-day messages by LDS prophets and apostles, and to religious inclusivism promoted by culture?
Clark, maybe I am being ludicrous on this, but the one Light in Mormonism sounds like the one Light of Deepak Chopra and not the exclusive one Light revealed in the Bible. Your thoughts on that?
What does Christ’s prayer that we may be one in him even as he is one in the Father mean to you, Todd?
Please note that Clark accepted that creedal Christians believe something different than that which is found in the New Testament with regard to the ontology of unity of the Godhead. Mormons tend to follow a New Testament interpretation rather than one informed by extra-biblical philosophical abstractions such as the one-substance Trinity. And as Clark points out, the real difference is in the Mormon understanding of creation.
Todd, if you ask for the technical answer of whether we “worship” Christ, you can find a variety of Mormon responses (apostles, lay members, etc.). And maybe that will give you ammunition to consider us subordinationists, I suppose.
But question the Mormon people more closely on how they feel about Christ, how they regard him, what they expect of him. And I suspect you will find that Mormons are not so much as one iota less respectful, less worshipful, and less admiring of Jesus Christ as any Evangelical you could name.
I think the distinction you are bringing up is purely an apologetics-related distinction. At the practical level of day-to-day LDS and Evangelical worship there is no distinction. I think you are straining at gnats here.
John f., Yahweh is not some “extra-biblical philosophical abstraction.”
And to be one with the Father encompasses that (1) I am united with the Triune God because of the free gracious work of the Triune God – unbelievably incredible – (The eternal Father, the eternal Son, and the eternal Spirit never ever needed this work to be One. In contrast, I and you and the Jew are in the ontological category of a transgressor from the womb) . . .
and (2) that I will be in my future sanctification and glorification, marvelously and perfectly in line with all the communicable attributes of the Triune God.
But the uncrossable distinction will always be there between me and God. He is all in all. I am not. And the older I get, the more I am humbled and in awe by this. He is more than just some collective among the common elohim. He is Yahweh – Father, Son, and Spirit! The only God to be worshipped as ultimate Love and ultimate Light is Sovereign LORD, Spirit, and Servant.
Seth, to be concerned about lifting up Yahweh as the One and Only is no “straining at a gnat.” And the practical distinctions in the daily living of my little ward and town are big. Very big.
Trinity, unity, and the one God or the Godhead.
I have heard these arguments for a long time now and it all boils down to perspective. If you remove the paradigms we find ourselves in one can see that we all are talking about the same thing in the same way. The argument about “Mormons” not believing in one God but many is unfounded. But in the respect that “Mormons” may take the fact that Jesus Christ has a body and God the Father has a body and are separate in this respect, as fact is correct. However “Mormons” maintain the perspective that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God. How is Trinity belief different?
“And the practical distinctions in the daily living of my little ward and town are big. Very big.”
Yeah? Like how?
Seth, there are all kinds of practical, warped spinoffs trickling down from Clark’s three points in #6. Just some quick, hurried observations . . .
1. Some are trying to reach their elohim status and from human LDS standards seem to be excelling in every way. But they are not seeing how far, far short they really fall from God’s glory and perfect, holy law. They are blinded to their own self-righteousness. The law destroys the fact that we are uniquely and inherently holy as God is.
2. Others feel guilty and wonder how the “successful ones” do it. They quit and then reboot themselves with renewed fervor. They swing back and forth between jealousy and guilt.
3. There is a continual cover-up and hush-hush over personal sinfulness and family sinfulness in wards. Worthy ones in their path to godhood just can’t possibly be so wrong and twisted in their sinful natures. Lots of hidden depression and discouragement that continues on. There is little public worship in prayer and singing that involves the acknowledging of inner depravity and human inability. Surely, gods don’t sing about their own wretchedness? But even in heaven, I will be relating my own unworthiness and the exclusive worthiness of the Holy One who redeemed me from my slavery and made me safe.
4. Many have given up on arriving at godhood status, and are content with a happy lower celestial experience. Nominal Mormonism rules the day in wards.
5. Some are bitter and angry, disgusted by the rules and physical works, necessary to reach godhood. Either it is too superficial/external or too hypocritical.
6. Others think very strongly that a physical temple is absolutely fundamental for worship of God. But why doesn’t Christ who took on a body, the sufficient meeting grounds for total worship by man to the Triune God? Who needs the secret and sacred experiences in a temple, when a Christian is already in union with the One who speaks openly?
7. And for many, if they experienced a contradiction between Yahweh of the old world scriptures and their ideal of an eternal marriage, they would reject Yahweh or even a current awnry spouse so that they might have the prized celestial marriage and chance for a happy eternal family. In other words, they could skip the presence of God, if it didn’t include their earthly soul mate to make them happy.
8. Most LDS would claim that Jesus rejects that I should ever pray to Him or the Spirit. Jesus gives a pattern not a prohibition. Big difference. The prohibitive paradigm here in the LDS I-15 corridor only fuels my desire to sing and pray to all Three in the public gatherings. And it is glorious joy to my heart.
I could go on; but I will stop, Seth.
At least for a second or two. 🙂
Depends upon what you mean. Blake is a little idiocyncratic here but I think even he would say there is a strong unity of the persons and that more than three can be in that unity. He can be seen more as making an argument about the difference between the Son and the Father and suggesting properties perhaps closer to the traditional Christian properties than many Mormons are comfortable with. (i.e. I suspect he’s actually closer to your position than to the typical Mormon)
Depends upon what you mean. Mormons tend to focus their worship on the person of the Father and pray to the Father primarily because that’s what 3 Nephi taught. However one can find cases where it’s broader. Once again it all depends upon what one is focusing in on – the persons or the unity. The question becomes whether, given a distinction of the persons, if we have different relations to the persons.
So for instance, I think it safe to say that even within the Trinitarianism of traditional Christianity while Jesus manifest the Father that there are different relations entailed by the differences of the persons. (Consider the difference between the Father and the Holy Ghost in traditional Christian dogma for a better example)
As I said though I think one has to be clear about what one is talking about. Loose language, even though that’s how we typically speak, can misinform here.
My typical answer though is that by worship we mean many different things. Unless one unpacks how one is using it then lots of errors will occur. That’s because there are different answers depending upon the sense being spoken of.
Todd, you don’t worship Yahwe, you worship the one-substance Trinity theorized by Tertullian long after the ministry of the Apostles was over. You call it Yahwe and, true, there is a plausible argument that the one-substance Trinity solution could work as a solution to the problem of unity between the Old Testament’s One God and the presence of the Son of God in the New Testament. But it is not the only legitimate theory that follows from the biblical text. In fact, an interpretation that does not import such an abstraction into the text but rather takes the biblical text at face value would seem more appropriate.
But even in heaven, I will be relating my own unworthiness and the exclusive worthiness of the Holy One who redeemed me from my slavery and made me safe.
On what basis will you be doing this? Where is this choice of yours coming from?
Do LDS sing these kind of hymns during temple weddings?
http://daveys2france.blogspot.com/2008/04/singing-at-banner.html
There’s no singing at the marriage ceremony of Mormons.
Oh.
I didn’t know that.
Any praying?
the scriptures expound to us that we should Pray always, at no time is prayer discurraged. So I am sure there is prayer at weddings. Also I think we are limmiting this topic to temple weddings because I know some LDS that had a wedding in the local chaple and there may have been signing.
Lots of prayer.