C.S., what a wonderful one liner. I don’t think it’s a requirement of a loving god that we do our metaphysical push-ups to get into heaven. If someone’s mind refuses to stretch around a palbable absurdity like three persons that are somehow mystically one, and give credence to this dogma as the fundamental rule of the universe, whoopie-twang! I happen personally to believe in the Trinity; I have real problems with St. Thomas Aquinas’s formularies for understanding its composition. (Which it seems strange, BTW, to see an evangelical Protestant pushing, but hey…)
If you find a chance to do so, take a good look at John Duns Scotus’s alternate view of God’s interaction with man, where the dichotomies that are so characteristic of all Western thought about God – even the creation-evolution argument and the angry God-propitiating Jesus scheme of atonement that has had several people here blaspheming the Father as being unjust – are seen in a unifying, grace-filled light. And it’s all based on Paul and John in Scripture.
In ancient times (pre Councel of Nicea)the Holy Trinity was the Father, the Son, the Mother.
That evil feminine thang got squashed by the “universal” church.
The Father has an immortal body, shaped like a human body, like the one Christ had when he showed himself, resurrected, to Mary et al. Christ started out being only spirit, but took upon himself a mortal body. He now has a perfect and resurrected body like the Father. The Spirit is only a personage of Spirit, no body in what we call the physical sense.
They are wholly, completely, utterly unified in everything that matters–whet they are trying to do (help us progress spiritually), how they are going to do it (give us freedom to choose, instructions on how to make choices, a way back when we go wrong, etc.), etc. Our ultimate goal is to become one with them as they are with each other–absolutely united in everything that matters.
Matter doesn’t really matter all that much.
Also, for those that keep wondering why there’s no Female in this picture: Well, the Father’s wife, I suspect, is doing a similar thing to what my wife is doing right now. The less-visible, rarely discussed, largely thankless, but much more important job of giving birth to and raising the children (in Her case, spirit children). Arguably the most crucial part of the entire process and not to be distracted from by trivial things like dealing with whiny, hardheaded mortals.
I find the theory that the first two Persons of the Trinity are actually resurrected personages to be pretty Moronic (though most people would attribute it to his father, I suppose).
It’s a viable theory if you want to get into a Gnostic multiple-layers-of-reality game. But it explains far less than it raises for questions. Who is God’s God, on that case? (First person to say Koshchei gets a safety razor and a hot fudge sundae thrown at them!)
[n.b.–he’s referring to Moroni, who (according to a Restorationist Christian sect) finished, sealed, and later delivered “The Book of Mormon”, (Mormon being Moroni’s father).]
Of course, the doctrine I’m referring to is not in the Book of Mormon itself, but the Doctrine and Covenants. (The stuff about Mother is pretty much pure speculation of my own.) We do indeed teach that the Father has a body of flesh and bones, that Christ still has the body of flesh and bones that he had the disciples touch after the resurrection. We also have (scripturally) that the Spirit does not have a body.
From there on, there’s a lot of speculation you can do, like that maybe the Father’s also got a resurrected body and was once mortal. There are reasons to speculate in this direction in the scriptures, of course, but what’s there doesn’t say that the Father’s body is resurrected (Joseph Smith implied this in a sermon at a funeral once, but it hasn’t been added to the canon. He could have been speculating as well, for all we know. Most people doubt that is was purely speculative, though, and so the question you raise below is a valid one.)
How does it raise any more question than where did the Trinity, whatever it/they are, come from? In my mind, not only is this way more comprehensible, it suggests at least one path to get to where we are, while I’ve never heard anything plausible to that effect from any other religion.
First, let me apologize, even though you appeared not to take offense, at the atrocious witticism I pulled regarding the origins of your post. (And I had not realized it was D&C, not BoM – although calling it “Smithic” probably wouldn’t have been at all funny!) I try never to bash anyone else’s faith, but to disagree respectfully, and I feel that I fell short of my own expectations of myself on that one.
I was under the (apparently mistaken) impression that the Father, according to Mormon thought, was equipped with a “Resurrection body” and hence, apparently, a resurrected personage. Which to me would imply that He too underwent that from which he resurrected/was resurrected, presumably on some other plane of existence. And as such, though our Creator, would not be the Creator, since some Metagod would have created Him, and placed Him in that other plane. This is why I concluded the Gnostic multiple-planes of deity structure was appropriate. I’d welcome clarification of the “official” doctrine on this from you or one of our other LDS posters, as I do try to understand LDS doctrine. (I despise people who invent straw-man distortions of other people’s thought and then condemn them for “believing that stupidity” when they actually don’t. I try never to knowingly do this, although, as in the present case, misunderstandings will inevitably happen.)
I try never to bash anyone else’s faith, but to disagree respectfully, and I feel that I fell short of my own expectations of myself on that one.