HT:  Ben Wright

I owe him on this Saturday morning for producing hearty laughter within Elon Todd Wood out here in Southeastern Idaho.  I didn’t realize there was a colorful mascot attached to my ancestral name.

Would my LDS friends think this fitting?

Should I make this picture my wordpress signature to bring comic relief for all?

GO ELON!!!!!!!!!

Nick pulled together some fascinating papers by various authors on this fundamental doctrine.

I am curious to see how LDS philosophers like Jim Faulconer, Blake Ostler, Clark Goble, Ben Huff, or Dan Peterson would give assent to the Trinitarian themes in articles #2, #4, #5, #6, and #8.

And did Blake Ostler really reject social trinitarianism, believing in monarchial monotheism back in 2005?  Dynamic monarchianism? 

I wonder if these guys are seeing some of the same things that I am learning in my study of John’s Gospel.

Bruce tackles the topic.

Calvinism versus Arminianism.

I have been told many times that within the LDS temple, you hear greater things from God. (more…)

What?!

This thread is highly provocative. (more…)

Jason Janz, site publisher and founder of the megablog, Sharper Iron, no- Jason Ehmann, pastor in Rigby, Idaho, just sent me this link.

I guess LDS missionaries carry the same fallen nature as the troublesome, notorious street preachers at Temple Square.

We all have depraved human natures.  Thank God for the work of Christ.

In introducing the second article of faith in our church family constitution, I would like to quote the frontier, unorthodox American emergent, Tony Jones, who still retains descriptions of Trinitarian orthodoxy.

In his book, The New Christians:  Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier (Jossey-Bass, 2008), Tony shares an analogy of the Trinity with his child, only to reveal his later misgivings over the illustration. 

But I was humbled when I was out to lunch a week later with LeRon Shults, a theologian of the highest pedigree.  “You can’t analogize God.  You can’t compare God to something,” LeRon told me.  “You can’t say what God is, only what God is not.”  I was making the mistake of comparing God to a ceiling fan, a great insult indeed to the creator of the universe. (more…)

The latest in published print on Evangelical / Mormon Conversation . . .

First, I need to quote Mark on his love for Southern Cal:

I live in Southern California. . . . Heidi and I, along with our two teenage kids, Emma Jean and Matthew, really do love it out here.  Where else can you go swimming, hiking, or mountain biking virtually every day—about fifty weeks a year?  Not long ago, I was out riding my bike.  I was pedaling up a long hill, doing some serious sweating, and thinking to myself how I wished it weren’t so hot outside—and then I felt guilty when I realized it was February.

 

I like that we can ski in the morning on the snowy slopes of the San Bernadino Mountains, and then on the afternoon of the same day, after a short drive, we can swim along the sun drenched shores of the Pacific Ocean.  (I’ve never actually done this.  I just enjoy knowing that I could.) (37-38).

If I lived in South Cal, you bet I would go skiing and swimming in one day.  🙂

Secondly, Mark Mittleberg devotes most all of chapter 6, “God Told Me It’s True! – the Mystical Approach” to Mormonism in his book, Choosing Your Faith:  In a World of Spiritual Options (Tyndale, 2008).

Some Mormon teachers today seem to be distancing themselves from these classic teachings of their founders, prophets, and leaders.  I find that some Mormons I talk to affirm and defend this doctrine, while others try to dodge it by saying, “I don’t know anything about that.” (I’ve actually gotten both of these responses within moments of each other during the same roundtable discussion—from two different Mormons.  I said to the second one, the one who had just denied knowledge of the many gods doctrine, “Of course you know something about it—your friend here just defended it a few minutes ago.”) (115).

Read that chapter and tell me what you think.

Clark has been writing on the Trinity and proposing the idea that evangelicals and LDS are not really too far apart from each other on Trinitarian belief.  What a topic!

I just bought two books in Grace Community Church’s bookstore related to this topic.

Father, Son, & Holy Spirit:  Relationships, Roles, Relevance (Crossway Books, 2005)

Communion With the Triune God (Crossway Books, 2007), edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor

In the latter book, Richard J. Mouw, writes,

This is just the right time for a republishing of John Owen’s great work.  There is renewed interest in the Trinity these days, and there is also a deep hungering for genuine spirituality.  Owen combines the two in a powerful manner, pointing the way to a vital relationship with the triune God.  It [is] good to have this classic available again–and to have it introduced by gifted interpreters of Owen’s life and thought.

I am wondering if Richard Mouw would believe that belief in “the triune God” is fundamental to the profession of Christianity.

Secondly, let me go back to the first book.  Bruce Ware writes in the opening acknowledgments,

It is the rare pastor’s conference that requests its speaker to devote five one-hour sessions to the doctrine of the Trinity.  But such was the case.  I am very grateful to the Conservative Baptist Northwest team who invited me out to Sun River, Oregon, March 2004, to speak at their annual meetings, giving me the opportunity to develop the talks that I’ve since rewritten and developed into this book.

Hot dog!  I would love to see a conference like this transpire in the LDS I-15 corridor!

May all behold the wonder of our Triune God! 

Gregory of Nazianzus once wrote,

No sooner do I conceive of the One that I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One.