I enjoyed the topic. May I share another tidbit I gleaned from Charles Pyle's book? As you know, Orthodox Christianity uses John 4:24 to justify the belief that God the Father is composed of a spirit essence. Pyle notes that other beings with physical bodies are also referred to as spirit in the New Testament. John 3:6 refers to a disciple who is born again as spirit. 1 Corinthians 15:45 refers to the resurrected Christ as a quickening spirit. (Then, even John 6:63 refers to the words of Jesus as spirit.) Therefore if the beings of flesh and bone from 1 Corinthians 15:45 and John 3:6 are referred to as spirit, John 4:24 could easily refer to a being of flesh and bone.
RE: John 4:24... there is no article “a” in Greek. The translator who translated the Bible into English added it. So it changes from “God is Spirit,” to “God is a Spirit.” Totally different meanings.
Reference the verse to trinity believers the one Jesus says to Mary. "Touch me not, for I haven't ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God."
Not just that, but also where Jesus was praying to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the baptism of Jesus where the Holy Spirit descended down and the Father spoke as the Heavens opened.
I have always been astounded that the few versus used to support the "mystery of the trinity" in the bible are so heavily out weighed by all the versus that clearly show support for the Godhead as separate beings. This even includes Jesus himself clearly saying he is the son of a father and praying to Him and even looking up to Him on the cross. How is it that so many humans have settled on a "mystery" to reconcile this rather than that simple view, and even teaching in the prayer of Jesus that the oneness is is purpose not physicality. At this point i do understand that it was because the churches at the time made a decision and then it got reinforced for generations and now carried down to our time. Had it been left to individuals to decide things would be quite different now.
I've looked at the Trinity, and no matter how I look at it, no matter how long I stare at it, it does not make sense. It is insane. Not only that, I do believe that I have deduced it's origin, and it doesn't bode well. The Greeks really liked talking to the Egyptians; it's where they got a lot of their philosophies and math. The Egyptians have a triune god, the sun god Ra. Ra had three forms depending on the time of day. In the morning, he was Ra-Horakhty, in the noon he was Amun, and in the evening Atum. All of these forms were Ra, but were not each other. Not only that, Ra was also the creator god of the Egyptian pantheon. Sounds a lot like the Trinity of mainstream Christianity, doesn't it. When I started reading about the Trinity, I knew something was wrong, like I'd heard about it before. Turns out, I had. Why do I know these things? Because at one point in my life, I knew mythology better than I knew my own religion. As sad as it sounds, it's true. But now, it is one of my greatest strengths, because I am able to identify similarities such as this.
The christological controversy is also part of the apostasy that influences the trinitarian controversy. Different groups argued over if christ preexisted, or not. If christ had a real body or only appeared to have one. If christ was the actual son of god, or was not, born of mary and joseph and was adopted as son, for being so righteous. If the father was the 1 god born or not. Then later the trinity, 325 ad and after. Before 325, art works didnt show the godhead as 3 in 1, as they did later, with 3 heads on one body, or 3 faces on one head, crazy art works of 4 eyes, three noses, 3 mouths on one head. The 3 share some of the eyes, a face on the right shares the eyes of the face in the middle, as does the face on the left. The left eye of the face on left is the right eye of the middle face too. The right eye of the face on the left is the right eye shared by the middle face. Google image this if you are confused. During the 10th or 11th century, statutes of the virgin mary open up to show the trinity inside her womb! This was controversial because it suggested that all three of the trinity were born, making the father and holy ghost also born with christ, if there is only 1 god in 1!
First off, great presentations It was informative. But I do need to push back just a little on one aspect. You are conflating the westminster confession which is a calvanist confession written in the 1600's (without body, parts, or passions) with the creeds. Joseph Fielding Smith did this way back in the day and everyone repeats the mistake. You are also mixing the clauses in the creeds that talk about the persons which are specifically stated should not be blended, (mormons would state this as being seperate) with the essence of God which is said to be one. I think if you clear up the confusion of the westminster confession verbiage you add to the creeds you will notice that a latter-day saints can actually pretty much agree to the Apostles creed and the nicene creed as they are written. Maybe not totally but they are a lot more agreeable to LDS thought than you think.
I was going to push back on your push back :) but then I read the transcript of the video carefully and realized I made a comment before introducing the slide in which I was showing the God of mainline Christianity TODAY vs the Latter-day Saint understanding (this is the slide I show around minute 7 of the video). Here is the exact quote from the transcript: “Okay, let’s talk about the view of the Godhead that came really out of the council of Nicea, and I’ll talk about that in a minute, but if you look at the nature of God and the Godhead, the Latter-day Saints versus mainstream Christianity today.” [then I read the comparison columns on the slide] So as you probably get from my videos I am not reading off a script; as I was getting ready to go into the detail about the Council of Nicea, I realized I first needed to show this summary slide of how mainstream Christianity views the Godhead TODAY compared to Latter-day Saints. The problems was my sentence right before the slide made it sound like the outcome of the Council of Nicea was what was on that slide - it was not. The outcome at that council related to the slide was the doctrine of the Trinity, or that the Godhead was all of one substance (Greek homoousios “of the same substance”, rather than homoiouisios, “of similar substance”). This term was not found in the scriptures and was impacted by the heavy Greek philosophy influence I discussed in the video. I agree with your thoughts on the Apostles’ Creed as it is quite beautiful and very little in disagreement. The Nicene creed, while it also has much to be agreed upon, at the heart of it is the doctrine of the Trinity, oneness of substance, which codified this philosophical view of God and set forth many philosophical trends that followed. I apologize for the length of the remaining comment here, but thought it would also be helpful to share a few things (more for those reading this than you as I imagine this isn’t anything new for you) from a just released book called “All Things New” from the Terry & Fiona Givens. Chapter 2 is 30 pages long going into much detail on this topic. Here are a few quotes I enjoyed which I thought were worth sharing related to the issues here (how the God without body, parts or passions was a concept that came quickly after Nicea, yet the codification or explicit stated dogma wasn’t until the Westminster Confession in 1648): These excerpts are between pages 34 - 49 of the book: Edwin Hatch describes a…source of…influence. Among the original Christians, “There was no taste for metaphysical discussion: there was possibly no appreciation of metaphysical conceptions.” Indeed, “the conception of the transcendence of God is absent. God is near to men and speaks to them.” Greek philosophy, however, had elevated whatever is bodiless and transcendent over whatever is physical and material. Because of the pervasive influence of Greek though on Christianity, the Christian God became “unseen and untouched,” it was believed that “he has no name,” and “all anthropomorphic conceptions are explained away.” [quotations - Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, p251-2] The medieval creeds lay the basis for Trinitarian thought but as Latter-day Saints we may misread that doctrine’s significance. It is not the lost knowledge of God’s embodiment itself that represents irreparable harm to believers. (Although as one Catholic scholar writes, “divine embodiment would have been part of the [early] theological mainstream.). The real catastrophe is what is lost WHEN God is disembodied. Once Christians abstract God from human form, it is natural to abstract Them from human forms of experience as well - especially of pain and suffering. As one historian of religion notes matter-of-factly, “The predominant view” came to be “that God could be said to know about suffering, but not to experience this personally.” In the view of one theologian sympathetic to that development, “A God who suffers would be more appropriately and object of pity than worship.” Augustine [354-430AD], the most potent, shaping voice of post-apostolic Christianity, was personally persuaded by the Greek philosophers. Speaking of God, he proclaimed, “I did not think of You under the figure of a human body. From the moment I began to know anything of philosophy, I had rejected that idea.” Consequently he also rejected as monstrous the notion that God could be personally affected by human suffering: “Who can sanely say that God is touched by any misery,” he thundered. In the background of these medieval creeds, then, is the accompanying dogma that God cannot be affected by human suffering. That there is a type of love that emanates from Him might be true. But His state is not altered by, affected by, or responsive to our own condition or needs, our yearnings, our heartbreaks, or our own outpourings of love. …Throughout the Middle Ages, however, the lamentable legacy of the creeds triumphed over a parental, feeling God. Thomas Aquinas [1225-1274AD], the second most influential voice in the shaping of Christianity affirmed, “To sorrow…over the misery of others belongs not to God.” [the Givens then spend much time sharing the Protestant creeds of the reformation, with the particular focus and elaboration on the Westminster Confession of 1648; however here is how the details around defining God was critiqued]: Latter-day Saints embrace a God who has a physical body and - most emphatically - passions, that is, the capacity to be moved to grief by the pain of another. The dominant trend through most of the Christian centuries had been to see God as having no anthropomorphic form and is incapable of suffering in sympathy with humankind (despite occasional voices that had emerged to challenge both tenets). With the Westminster Confession, however, a bodiless and passionless God became explicit dogma for Protestants. Now I don’t want to misstate the Givens, as a purpose of this chapter (appropriately titled Double Catastrophe) was to show how the reformation changes further compounded doctrinal errors and they illustrate that quite well on a number of points (and a lot of focus on the Westminster Confession). However I wanted to show how the particular point of the concept of God without body, parts or passions, had been around as a fundamental view of God shortly after the Nicene creed and the Westminster Confession only codified or made it explicit dogma.
I testify the Godhead is true and the trinity doctrine is an abomination. Jesus does indeed testify that He doesn't do things of His own authority nor speaks of His own authority. He does things and says things because the Father commanded Him to. I testify that the Church is true and His. Jesus also did testify of the Father being His Father, His God as well as our God and our Father. He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane to the Father. He would not do that to Himself if He were God the Father. He is the Son of God. No part in the Bible does it ever say the trinity is confirmed. The Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit are separate personages while united in one divine purpose. Mainstreams also assert that we, as human beings cannot become like God and Jesus because of their subjective belief that we are of a "different species". Jesus had said about the Jewish authorities and other churches that they acted with godliness but don't embrace their divine potential spiritually, therefore none of the other churches had the fulness of truth. This is what He had told Joseph Smith in the First Vision.
5:55 Godhead (Trinity)
9:53 Trinity
11:18 birth of the doctrine of the Trinity.
23:33 Subordination of Jesus to HF.
you are extraordinarily underrated.
I really appreciated hearing your comment today - thank you!
Thank you so much! You use a lot of the same ancient writings that my school uses.
I enjoyed the topic. May I share another tidbit I gleaned from Charles Pyle's book? As you know, Orthodox Christianity uses John 4:24 to justify the belief that God the Father is composed of a spirit essence. Pyle notes that other beings with physical bodies are also referred to as spirit in the New Testament. John 3:6 refers to a disciple who is born again as spirit. 1 Corinthians 15:45 refers to the resurrected Christ as a quickening spirit. (Then, even John 6:63 refers to the words of Jesus as spirit.) Therefore if the beings of flesh and bone from 1 Corinthians 15:45 and John 3:6 are referred to as spirit, John 4:24 could easily refer to a being of flesh and bone.
fascinating insight - thanks for sharing!
RE: John 4:24... there is no article “a” in Greek. The translator who translated the Bible into English added it. So it changes from “God is Spirit,” to “God is a Spirit.” Totally different meanings.
Reference the verse to trinity believers the one Jesus says to Mary. "Touch me not, for I haven't ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God."
Great example - thanks for the comment!
Not just that, but also where Jesus was praying to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the baptism of Jesus where the Holy Spirit descended down and the Father spoke as the Heavens opened.
I have always been astounded that the few versus used to support the "mystery of the trinity" in the bible are so heavily out weighed by all the versus that clearly show support for the Godhead as separate beings. This even includes Jesus himself clearly saying he is the son of a father and praying to Him and even looking up to Him on the cross. How is it that so many humans have settled on a "mystery" to reconcile this rather than that simple view, and even teaching in the prayer of Jesus that the oneness is is purpose not physicality. At this point i do understand that it was because the churches at the time made a decision and then it got reinforced for generations and now carried down to our time. Had it been left to individuals to decide things would be quite different now.
Agree 100%!!!
Is there a part 2, I can't find it?
Yes, there is a part 2. Here is the direct link:
ua-cam.com/video/c_rfmHVrK4Y/v-deo.html
Very good information!
I've looked at the Trinity, and no matter how I look at it, no matter how long I stare at it, it does not make sense. It is insane. Not only that, I do believe that I have deduced it's origin, and it doesn't bode well. The Greeks really liked talking to the Egyptians; it's where they got a lot of their philosophies and math. The Egyptians have a triune god, the sun god Ra. Ra had three forms depending on the time of day. In the morning, he was Ra-Horakhty, in the noon he was Amun, and in the evening Atum. All of these forms were Ra, but were not each other. Not only that, Ra was also the creator god of the Egyptian pantheon. Sounds a lot like the Trinity of mainstream Christianity, doesn't it. When I started reading about the Trinity, I knew something was wrong, like I'd heard about it before. Turns out, I had. Why do I know these things? Because at one point in my life, I knew mythology better than I knew my own religion. As sad as it sounds, it's true. But now, it is one of my greatest strengths, because I am able to identify similarities such as this.
Thank you for sharing these additional fascinating details!
The christological controversy is also part of the apostasy that influences the trinitarian controversy. Different groups argued over if christ preexisted, or not. If christ had a real body or only appeared to have one. If christ was the actual son of god, or was not, born of mary and joseph and was adopted as son, for being so righteous. If the father was the 1 god born or not. Then later the trinity, 325 ad and after. Before 325, art works didnt show the godhead as 3 in 1, as they did later, with 3 heads on one body, or 3 faces on one head, crazy art works of 4 eyes, three noses, 3 mouths on one head. The 3 share some of the eyes, a face on the right shares the eyes of the face in the middle, as does the face on the left. The left eye of the face on left is the right eye of the middle face too. The right eye of the face on the left is the right eye shared by the middle face. Google image this if you are confused. During the 10th or 11th century, statutes of the virgin mary open up to show the trinity inside her womb! This was controversial because it suggested that all three of the trinity were born, making the father and holy ghost also born with christ, if there is only 1 god in 1!
Last part I meant if they are 3 in 1, and only 1😊
👍😊🙏🙋♀️🇺🇸
First off, great presentations It was informative. But I do need to push back just a little on one aspect. You are conflating the westminster confession which is a calvanist confession written in the 1600's (without body, parts, or passions) with the creeds. Joseph Fielding Smith did this way back in the day and everyone repeats the mistake. You are also mixing the clauses in the creeds that talk about the persons which are specifically stated should not be blended, (mormons would state this as being seperate) with the essence of God which is said to be one. I think if you clear up the confusion of the westminster confession verbiage you add to the creeds you will notice that a latter-day saints can actually pretty much agree to the Apostles creed and the nicene creed as they are written. Maybe not totally but they are a lot more agreeable to LDS thought than you think.
I was going to push back on your push back :) but then I read the transcript of the video carefully and realized I made a comment before introducing the slide in which I was showing the God of mainline Christianity TODAY vs the Latter-day Saint understanding (this is the slide I show around minute 7 of the video). Here is the exact quote from the transcript:
“Okay, let’s talk about the view of the Godhead that came really out of the council of Nicea, and I’ll talk about that in a minute, but if you look at the nature of God and the Godhead, the Latter-day Saints versus mainstream Christianity today.” [then I read the comparison columns on the slide]
So as you probably get from my videos I am not reading off a script; as I was getting ready to go into the detail about the Council of Nicea, I realized I first needed to show this summary slide of how mainstream Christianity views the Godhead TODAY compared to Latter-day Saints. The problems was my sentence right before the slide made it sound like the outcome of the Council of Nicea was what was on that slide - it was not. The outcome at that council related to the slide was the doctrine of the Trinity, or that the Godhead was all of one substance (Greek homoousios “of the same substance”, rather than homoiouisios, “of similar substance”). This term was not found in the scriptures and was impacted by the heavy Greek philosophy influence I discussed in the video.
I agree with your thoughts on the Apostles’ Creed as it is quite beautiful and very little in disagreement. The Nicene creed, while it also has much to be agreed upon, at the heart of it is the doctrine of the Trinity, oneness of substance, which codified this philosophical view of God and set forth many philosophical trends that followed.
I apologize for the length of the remaining comment here, but thought it would also be helpful to share a few things (more for those reading this than you as I imagine this isn’t anything new for you) from a just released book called “All Things New” from the Terry & Fiona Givens. Chapter 2 is 30 pages long going into much detail on this topic. Here are a few quotes I enjoyed which I thought were worth sharing related to the issues here (how the God without body, parts or passions was a concept that came quickly after Nicea, yet the codification or explicit stated dogma wasn’t until the Westminster Confession in 1648):
These excerpts are between pages 34 - 49 of the book:
Edwin Hatch describes a…source of…influence. Among the original Christians, “There was no taste for metaphysical discussion: there was possibly no appreciation of metaphysical conceptions.” Indeed, “the conception of the transcendence of God is absent. God is near to men and speaks to them.” Greek philosophy, however, had elevated whatever is bodiless and transcendent over whatever is physical and material. Because of the pervasive influence of Greek though on Christianity, the Christian God became “unseen and untouched,” it was believed that “he has no name,” and “all anthropomorphic conceptions are explained away.” [quotations - Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity, p251-2]
The medieval creeds lay the basis for Trinitarian thought but as Latter-day Saints we may misread that doctrine’s significance. It is not the lost knowledge of God’s embodiment itself that represents irreparable harm to believers. (Although as one Catholic scholar writes, “divine embodiment would have been part of the [early] theological mainstream.). The real catastrophe is what is lost WHEN God is disembodied. Once Christians abstract God from human form, it is natural to abstract Them from human forms of experience as well - especially of pain and suffering. As one historian of religion notes matter-of-factly, “The predominant view” came to be “that God could be said to know about suffering, but not to experience this personally.” In the view of one theologian sympathetic to that development, “A God who suffers would be more appropriately and object of pity than worship.” Augustine [354-430AD], the most potent, shaping voice of post-apostolic Christianity, was personally persuaded by the Greek philosophers. Speaking of God, he proclaimed, “I did not think of You under the figure of a human body. From the moment I began to know anything of philosophy, I had rejected that idea.” Consequently he also rejected as monstrous the notion that God could be personally affected by human suffering: “Who can sanely say that God is touched by any misery,” he thundered.
In the background of these medieval creeds, then, is the accompanying dogma that God cannot be affected by human suffering. That there is a type of love that emanates from Him might be true. But His state is not altered by, affected by, or responsive to our own condition or needs, our yearnings, our heartbreaks, or our own outpourings of love.
…Throughout the Middle Ages, however, the lamentable legacy of the creeds triumphed over a parental, feeling God. Thomas Aquinas [1225-1274AD], the second most influential voice in the shaping of Christianity affirmed, “To sorrow…over the misery of others belongs not to God.”
[the Givens then spend much time sharing the Protestant creeds of the reformation, with the particular focus and elaboration on the Westminster Confession of 1648; however here is how the details around defining God was critiqued]:
Latter-day Saints embrace a God who has a physical body and - most emphatically - passions, that is, the capacity to be moved to grief by the pain of another. The dominant trend through most of the Christian centuries had been to see God as having no anthropomorphic form and is incapable of suffering in sympathy with humankind (despite occasional voices that had emerged to challenge both tenets). With the Westminster Confession, however, a bodiless and passionless God became explicit dogma for Protestants.
Now I don’t want to misstate the Givens, as a purpose of this chapter (appropriately titled Double Catastrophe) was to show how the reformation changes further compounded doctrinal errors and they illustrate that quite well on a number of points (and a lot of focus on the Westminster Confession). However I wanted to show how the particular point of the concept of God without body, parts or passions, had been around as a fundamental view of God shortly after the Nicene creed and the Westminster Confession only codified or made it explicit dogma.
@@latterdaysaintsqa Thanks for the clarification.
No passion, really, he gets mad too. The flood was an unhappy God.
I testify the Godhead is true and the trinity doctrine is an abomination. Jesus does indeed testify that He doesn't do things of His own authority nor speaks of His own authority. He does things and says things because the Father commanded Him to. I testify that the Church is true and His. Jesus also did testify of the Father being His Father, His God as well as our God and our Father. He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane to the Father. He would not do that to Himself if He were God the Father. He is the Son of God. No part in the Bible does it ever say the trinity is confirmed. The Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit are separate personages while united in one divine purpose.
Mainstreams also assert that we, as human beings cannot become like God and Jesus because of their subjective belief that we are of a "different species". Jesus had said about the Jewish authorities and other churches that they acted with godliness but don't embrace their divine potential spiritually, therefore none of the other churches had the fulness of truth. This is what He had told Joseph Smith in the First Vision.