"Christianity Contrasted to Mormonism" - God is Trinity recap

On Monday December 5^th, 2016 we had our fifth meeting to study “Christianity Contrasted to Mormonism.” We studied the unique Christian doctrine of God as Trinity. Mormonism asserts that the Trinity means there are three separate gods whereas Christianity says there is one God who is three persons. So we turned to the Bible to see how to make a case for the Christian concept of the Trinity.

You can check out the slides we reviewed and/or a video of the class here. A written recap is provided here…

Mormonism says there are three (or more!) gods

Joseph Smith said that he has “always declared… [the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to]… constitute three distinct personages and three Gods.” As we saw last week, Bringham Young goes so far to admit that he doesn’t even know how many gods there are! In Mormonism there are arguably an infinite number of gods, making it literally the world’s most polytheistic religion.

Joseph Smith went on to criticize the orthodox Christian concept of the Trinity calling it “a curious organization… All are to be crammed into one God… 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 let’s examine the Christian concept of the Trinity…

Making a biblical case for the Trinity

We went on to unpack this, but we started out with part of the Athanasian Creed to define the orthodox Christian position:

Put in more modern, simpler terms theologian James White says this:

To make a case for the Trinity from the bible we will establish two fundamental truths:

1. There is one God.
2. There are three distinct persons who are God.

1. There is one God

That the Bible declares there is one God should be obvious to the honest reader. The great Jewish Shema says “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the Lord is one!” This is further supported in the Old Testament (OT) in 1 Kings 8:60; Isa 45:5, 18; etc.

Lest we think that the belief in one God ends in the New Testament (NT) we see Jesus affirming the Shema (Mark 12:29), Paul stating that there is one God (Rom 3:30; 1 Cor 8:4), and James saying that even the demons know that there is one God (James 2:19)!

2.1 There are three distinct persons

Throughout the NT we see interactions between the Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit that show them to be distinguished from one another. Jesus prays to the Father (Matt 11:27; Matt 26:39; John 14:16-17). Jesus talks about the Spirit (John 7:39; John 16:7). The Father gives the Spirit (Luke 11:13; John 14:26; 15:26). In a beautiful Trinitarian scene all three are distinctly present at Jesus’ baptism: Jesus is being baptized, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove, and the Father speaks (Matthew 3:16, 17). [For more distinctions see 1 Peter 1:1-2 and Matt 28:19].

The Bible shows that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father; the Son is not the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not the Son; the Holy Spirit is not the Father, and the Father is not the Holy Spirit.

2.2.1 The Father is God

The Bible is clear that the Father is God. We see God referred to as Father in the OT (Ps 89:26; Isa 63:16). Then in the NT Jesus solidifies this by commanding his followers to pray to God as Father (Matt 6:9).

2.2.2 The Son is God

When the NT authors wanted to talk about the Son as God they had to be careful. They used the Greek term ho theos (literally, “the God”) to refer to God the Father. So when they spoke of Jesus it was difficult for them to affirm Christ’s deity without saying or implying that he is the Father. They had to state it in other ways. We’ll see four reasons the NT shows that the Son is God

1. In Colossians 1:15-19; 2:9 Paul says that the whole fullness of deity – that pure God substance – dwells in Christ in bodily form.
2. The NT authors used the name of God in the OT (Yahweh) in the Greek – kyrios, which means “Lord” for Jesus; then they apply to him OT passages about Yahweh! (e.g. Romans 10:9 and Joel 2:32; 1 Cor 8:6).
3. The NT authors gave Christ roles normally reserved for God. (E.g. three different authors affirm that Christ is the Creator of all reality: Col 1:15, 16; John 1:1-3; Heb 1:1-3).
4. Sometimes the NT authors lose all restraint and come right and say Jesus is ho theos – Jesus is God. (E.g., Heb 1:8; Titus 2:13; Phil 2:5-7; John 1:1, 18; 20:28; 1 John 5:20).

2.2.3 The Holy Spirit is God

Regarding the Holy Spirit, we read that he is referred to as the Spirit of God (Rom 8:9). We also see that lying to the Holy Spirit is equated with lying to God (see the story of Ananias in Acts 5:3-4). In the OT the Spirit is poured out on Samuel and called “the God of Israel” (2 Sam 23:2-3). Then we see divine properties attributed to the Holy Spirit (e.g. the Spirit’s omnipresence in Psalm 139). For these reasons the biblical authors show that they understood the Holy Spirit to be God.

Making sense of the biblical data

The early church fathers knew these two facts: (1) there is one God and (2) There are three distinct persons who are God. But they had to work out how to properly articulate these facts. The orthodox description of the Trinity arose out of a need to respond to heresies - incorrect beliefs about God. (Check out the infographic below.)

We briefly talked about a few incomplete analogies of the Trinity. While analogies help illustrate some characteristic of the Trinity, about God, they are ultimately imperfect. We mentioned the egg analogy and the water analogy.

Then we read the Nicene Creed from 325 where the writers made a point to say that Jesus is “of one substance with the Father” and go on to anathematize those who say “the Son of God is from a different hypostasis”. This latter statement confused the Christian church in the East where, in their language of Greek, “hypostasis” meant “person”. So they read the Nicene Creed to be an affirmation of Modalism – the heresy that the Father and Son are not different persons but one person taking different forms or modes.

William Lane Craig uses the illustration of
Cerberus as a tri-"personal" being

After some time the confusion was cleared up. The orthodox position came to be that God is one substance (homoousias), one divine essence but three individuals (hypostases) – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each exemplifying that divine essence. Again, as James White said, “there are three who’s and one what.” God is a tri-personal being.

Question: Who or what is God? Answer: The Trinity is God.

A plausibility argument for the Trinity

We briefly went over a bonus argument to show that it is plausible that the Trinity is God. Here is each step of the argument:

• By definition God is the greatest conceivable being.
• As the greatest conceivable being God must be morally perfect.
• Love is a moral perfection.
• Therefore the greatest conceivable being must be a loving being.
• The very nature of love is to give oneself away to another.
• As perfectly loving by nature, God must be a plurality of persons so that God’s love is eternally directed internal to God himself.
• Therefore, God is a plurality of persons – three persons of the Trinity.

We didn’t spend too long on this argument so think it over and see if it is useful to you or not.

A few words on application

To wrap up, we mentioned three areas of application that the doctrine of Trinity can have on our life. It is not just a dry, abstract, unimportant concept. The Trinity is who God is! And as such it has application on life.

1. Prayer: The normal model ought to be prayer directed to the Father, in the authority and name of the Son, and with the power of the Holy Spirit.
2. Family/marriage: In family, marriage, and other social structures we see Trinitarian qualities of multiple persons equal in substance but taking on different roles (this is called “Ontological equality but economic subordination”).
3. Worship: Our worship ought to be intensified when we see that God’s perfect inter-personal love doesn’t need us; yet by grace we have adopted into the divine fellowship!

The final application, of worship, really struck me. God is by nature loving. It’s not like God was lonely and decided to create us so that he could love. God is necessarily in a perfect fellowship of love as three persons. But, by grace he chose to create us and allow us to enter in. What a privilege! What a God!

Next Time

Next time we will compare/constrast the Christian and Mormon gospels. We will then do a bit of Bible study to justify the Christian gospel.

We will pick up next Monday, December 5^th, 2016 same time, same place (7-8:30pm at Mt. Zion UMC education building rooms 13-15). Hope to see you all there!

P.S. As a bit of homework for next week, think about how you might describe the good news of the gospel in your own words.