Note:

I teach Elder’s Quorum every other week.  These are my lesson notes from today’s discussion.  In general, the material presented in italics, are things I said or questions asked by me; but not always!!  Also, you will notice that there is a ton of material here.  I did not get through all of it, but picked and chose how to lead the discussion based on how the lesson was going organically.   Lastly, Sister Jerilyn Pool is in my ward.  For those readers who don’t know who Sister Pool is, she is one of the permabloggers and administrators for Feminist Mormon Housewives and she was the organizer of this year’s Wear Pants to Church extravaganza.   Well, it turns out that Sister Pool gave this same lesson today in our Relief Society today (did I mention we are in the same ward?).  Click here to read her lesson notes that are more geared toward a female audience.

From the Life of Joseph Fielding Smith, Chapter 2:  Our Savior Jesus Christ

Last week we discussed God the Father. Today, we are discussing aged the Son. Then there is also the Holy Spirit. And of course Mother in Heaven of whom we only talk about when we are talking about how we should not talk about her.

Question:

What is monotheism?
What is polytheism?

We can take polytheism simply as the recognition and worship of more than one deity.

Historically, the “Three great religions of the Book” – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have been seen as monotheistic.

Have a class member read:

Mosiah 13:28
28 And moreover, I say unto you, that salvation doth not come by the law alone; and were it not for theatonement, which God himself shall make for the sins and iniquities of his people, that they must unavoidably perish, notwithstanding the law of Moses.

Have a class member read:

Mosiah 15:1
And now Abinadi said unto them: I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people.

Have a class member read:

Mosiah 17:8
8 For thou hast said that God himself should come down among the children of men; and now, for this cause thou shalt be put to death unless thou wilt recall all the words which thou hast spoken evil concerning me and my people.
This is important to note because one of Christopher Hitchen’s favorite things to say was that God is a immoral being because he required His Son to die for us. But as we see, GOD HIMSELF, Jesus died for us.

The Christian martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote a friend: “The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help…The God of the Bible…wins power and space in the world by his weakness” 7

Question:

What does it mean to worship?

Have a class member read:

D&C 76:21

21 And saw the holy angels, and them who are sanctified before his throne, worshiping God, and the Lamb, who worship him forever and ever.

Are Mormons monotheistic or polytheistic?

What does it mean to worship a god?

As I see it, Mormons are not polytheists or monotheists. Mormons are monolatrous (preferential worship of one God from the pantheon).

An interesting issue related to this is that we often use the word worship to describe our relationship to God the Father and Jesus, but not generally for the Holy Ghost, though again, worship of the Holy Ghost is at least implicit in our theological placement of it in the godhead.

Other interesting note. One of the hot topics in Bible scholarship is how the Hebrews use to be polytheistic and specifically, that they believed God had a wife (sometimes identified as Adherah, wisdom, Sophia).

1st paragraph:

Have class member read out loud:

“I try to love Him, our Redeemer, above everything else. It is my duty to. I travel up and down in this country as one of His special witnesses. I couldn’t be a special witness of Jesus Christ if I didn’t have the absolute and positive knowledge that He is the Son of God and Redeemer of the world.”

Question

What does he mean by being a “special witness” and having a “positive knowledge”
Do we assume that Jesus of Nazareth in fact appeared to him?

Existentialism

Most existentialist philosophers are/were atheists. That is, they believe there is no God and since there is no God, life has no meaning. Because life has no meaning, one is responsible in creating one’s one meaning.

Jean-Paul Satre argues that there are no objective values (which I would argue against) and that we can identify one thing that logically must be considered not only valuable, but also the most valuable thing; in that sense, this thing is the highest good. Naturally this thing is freedom. His argument is fairly straightforward. Because you give something value only when you freely choose it, all value comes from free-choice.

Question:

How does that statement, “Because you give something value only when you freely choose it, all value comes from free-choice,” fit (or not fit) into your understanding of faith of Jesus Christ?

It seems to me that true faith can only exist if there are strong arguments for and against a certain truth claim, otherwise agency is null and void. If the evidence is so overwhelming for one side of an argument, such as evidence that gravity exists, then are we really choosing to believe?

3rd paragraph.

Pay attention to how he uses the words “hope”, and “feel”

Listen to the personal aspect of what Joseph Fielding Smith is saying:

Have class member read out loud:

“I sit and reflect at times, and in my reading of the scriptures, I think of the mission of our Lord, what he did for me, and when these feelings come upon me I say to myself, I cannot be untrue to him. He loved me with a perfect love, as he has done for all men, especially those who serve him, and I must love him with all the love I can, even if it is imperfect, which it should not be. It is wonderful. I did not live in the days of our Savior; he has not come to me in person. I have not beheld him. His Father and he have not felt it necessary to grant me such a great blessing as this. But it is not necessary. I have felt his presence. I know that the Holy Spirit has enlightened my mind and revealed him unto me, so that I do love my Redeemer, I hope, and feel it is true, better than everything else in this life. I would not have it otherwise. I want to be true to him. I know he died for me, for you and all mankind that we might live again through the resurrection. I know that he died that I might be forgiven my follies, my sins, and be cleansed from them. How wonderful is this love. How can I, knowing this, do anything else but love him, my Redeemer. I want my boys in the mission fields to feel this same way. I want my children and my grandchildren to feel that way, and never stray from the path of truth and righteousness.”

I sometimes joke with Cathy that one of these days I will get up in Fast and Testimony meeting and say, “I know my wife is true.”   

Discuss:

How if one is “true” it  can also means that one is faithful to something. Example: in the above paragraph, Joseph Fielding Smith states, “I want to be true to him”

Question:

How can one come know Jesus’ mission is true, that He is the Son of God if he has not come to me in person?”

Epistemology:
the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity

Question:
That is, how do we come to know anything? What does Mormonism say?

Objective and Subjective truths:
Think on these two statements and tell me if they are both true:

“It is 45 degrees outside”
“I know my wife loves me.”

What is the difference?
The former can be objectively tested by everybody. We simply have to go outside and check a thermometer. It is reproducible.

Questions:

The latter is based on my own feelings and experience. It is subjective. It is not objective. Does that make it any less true?

Which of these two truths give my life meaning? The objective or subjective truth?

The subjective truth does.

Some will argue that Mormons’ epistemology is all feeling based. Let me ask you this:

Question:
What major life choice has anyone made that wasn’t essentially based on a feeling?

With my marriage to Cathy, I saw evidence that she loved me and eventually, I had to take that leap of faith into the unknown.
If I waited until “all the evidence was in” I would never have married her.

Question:

How does this translate into our knowing that Jesus is the Son of God and that He performed the atonement for us?

What it’s like to be a bat:
We can study about bats. We can study their sonar, etc. But will all of this study tell us what it is like to be a bat?
No.
The only way we would ever know what it is like to be a bat is to be a bat.

Similarly, the only way to know what it is like to be a Christian is to be a Christian. At some point we have to make the leap.

Question:

What is Mormonism’s epistemology?

Have class member read:

D&C 9:8
8 But, behold, I say unto you, that you must astudy it out in yourbmind; then you must cask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your dbosom shall eburn within you; therefore, you shall ffeel that it is right.

D&C 88:118

118 And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith

D&C 90:13
15 And set in order the churches, and astudy and blearn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with clanguages, tongues, and people.

D&C 109:7, 14
7 And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith;

14 And do thou grant, Holy Father, that all those who shall worship in this house may be taught words of wisdom out of the best books, and that they may seek learning even by study, and also by faith, as thou hast said;

Some good quotes for discussion:

“If our popular [Mormon] culture demonizes the intellect, that’s not what Joseph [Smith] taught. Joseph taught that we are intellects fully as much as we are spirits. Or sometimes he seemed to talk that our essence is spirit-intellects. That’s what we ontologically are. And to bifurcate those, to sunder the mind and the spirit is to be apostate from major thrusts of Joseph’s theology” (Phillip Barlow; Mormon Matters podcast; episode 73; 1:15)

“And to bifurcate those, to sunder the mind and the spirit is to be apostate from major thrusts of Joseph’s theology. The point is to look to our own [Mormon]culture, our own tradition, our own scriptures, and find where we are taking the name of the Lord God in vane by trivializing it and sitting in our classes as though they were little scripts waiting to be inacted instead of asking authentic questions that would magnify our callings and ours souls and our minds. ” (Phillip Barlow, professor and holder of the Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, Mormon Matters podcast; episode 73, “And the survey Says…!” 1:15)

“Think, Brethren, think. But do not think so far you cannot think back again”(Brigham Young, JD 3:247, “Instructions to the Bishops—Men Judged According to Their Knowledge—Organization of the Spirit and Body—Thought and Labor to Be Blended Together” A Discourse by President Brigham Young, Delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, March 16, 1856).

“Doctrine without the Holy Spirit leads to legalism. The Holy Spirit without doctrine leads to fanaticism. But doctrine with the Holy Spirit leads to true power in the Christian life. And this should be our goal – to have both the correct doctrine, the correct understanding of Christian truth, conjoined with a Spirit-filled Christian life. So we have both Word and the Spirit” (Dr. William Lane Craig, Defenders podcast; Defenders 2: Foundations of Christian Doctrine (Part 1); 15:00)

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Teachings of Joseph Fielding Smith

Have Class member read out loud:

Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God and the Savior of the world.

May I say, as plainly and as forcefully as I can, that we believe in Christ. We accept him without reservation as the Son of God and the Savior of the world.
We know that salvation is in Christ; that he was the Firstborn Son of the Eternal Father; that he was chosen and foreordained in the councils of heaven to work out the infinite and eternal atonement; that he was born into the world as the Son of God; and that he has brought life andimmortality to light through the gospel.

We believe with perfect surety that Christ came to ransom men from the temporal and spiritual death brought into the world by the fall of Adam and that he took upon himself the sins of all men on condition of repentance…

Let’s talk about what it means that Jesus is the Son of God.

I like to compare our beliefs to traditional  orthodox Christianity. I find that in doing so in a respectful manner, we better understand
our beliefs. So, lets look at the Doctrine of the Trinity for a Second.

THE QUESTIONS WE ASK WILL DETERMINE THE ANSWERS WE RECEIVE:

“…Our questions are limited by our language and world view. If you were a physician in the middle-ages, you would ask God, “O.K., which of the four humors do I need to deplete from this body to heal it?” When God tries to bring us to a new paradigm, the previous paradigm has to collapse. We have to move on. It may seem as if we have been deceived, but God can only answer the questions we are ready to ask. That’s the great thing about Joseph Smith. He got better and better at asking questions…” (Terryl Givens, Engaging Gospel Doctrine podcast, episode 53)

Have class member read out loud:

Joseph Smith History 1:18-20

18 My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)—and which I should join.
19 I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight…
20 He again forbade me to join with any of them; and many other things did he say unto me, which I cannot write at this time.

Question:

Which creed would Joseph be speaking of here?

Not the Nicene Creed. It would have been Westminster Confession of Faith. It reads in part:

Have class member read out loud:

(As the class member reads out loud, write down the following words: person, substance, begotten.)

Chapter II

Of God, and of the Holy Trinity

I. There is but one only,living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit,invisible, without body, parts,or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal, most just, and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

II. God has all life,glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself; and is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He has made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting His own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and has most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever Himself pleases. In His sight all things are open and manifest, His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to Him contingent, or uncertain. He is most holy in all His counsels, in all His works, and in all His commands. To Him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience He is pleased to require of them.

III. In the unity of the Godhead there be three Persons of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.

Have class member read out loud:

(As the class member reads out loud, write down the following words: person, substance, begotten.)

NICENE CREED:

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

“And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made…..”

Much of the following I was only able to touch on briefly due to time constraints. These notes come from a three-part series I have written for the blog about the doctrine of the Trinity, but have yet to still publish.  I just did a copy and paste job here and my wife hasn’t edited any of the pending-post yet, so not all of it is super smooth

 

Question:

What is a “mind”?
A mind /ˈmaɪnd/ is the set of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, perception, thinking,judgement, and memory—a characteristic of humans, but which also may apply to other life forms.[3][4]

This is what allows us to be sentient beings: sentience” as “the ability to feel, perceive, or be conscious, or to experience subjectivity

Before we go any further, we need to clarify what is meant by “person”. The modern concept of a person, what it means to be a person, actually sprang out of the trinitarian debates among the early Church Fathers. “Person”, in the modern psychological sense (and the way in which we are discussing it in this post) is a self-concsious individual, a center of self consciousness. The Avatar movie gives a very good illustration of one person with two natures, which is a sort of mirror image of the Trinity, which says there are three persons with one nature. Confused?

Tertullian, who lived from AD 150 – AD 225, a North African Church Father, coined the term persona to express the idea that there were three persons that were God, and he used the term trinitas for the first time to describe who God is. God is a trinity. A trinity of what? He is a trinity of persons. This came, then, to be expressed as the idea of three persons in one nature. That is an articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three persons who are the one God.

Here is one way to explain what “person” means, in regards to the Trinity: My being supports one center of self-consciousness which I call “I” – that is how I refer to myself. I am one being who is one person. I have this one center of self-consciousness. God is a being with three centers of self-consciousness – three “I”s. There is the Father, there is the Son, and there is the Holy Spirit. So just as I am one being with one center of self-consciousness,with the Trinity, God is one being, but with three centers of self-consciousness. I think that is the easiest way to think about what the Trinity is.

The roots of the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity that was eventually promulgated at Nicaea comes out of the “Logos Christology” of the early Greek apologists. Who were these men? These were second century Christians. They lived in the century right after Christ, beginning about AD 100 and following. They included people like Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus, Athenagoras. These were early Christian writers who wrote in defense of the Christian faith in an overwhelmingly pagan Roman culture. These men helped to lay the ground work for the doctrine of the Trinity that was eventually promulgated at the Council of Nicaea.

This is called a Logos Christology because it takes its inspiration, on the one hand, from the prologue to the Gospel of John, where,John says “In the beginning was the Logos,” that is to say, the “Word” or “Reason.” Logos is the Greek word for “word” or “reason.” “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God.” And then John describes how he became flesh and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus Christ. So, on the one hand, there was this doctrine of Christ as the Logos of God coming out of the prologue of the Gospel of John.

But, significantly, this also connected with the work of a Jewish philosopher named Philo of Alexandria in Egypt. If you ever doubt the influence of philosophy upon the formulation of classic Christian doctrines, this is a case in point that you can look to. Philo, who lived from about 25 BC to AD 40, was a Jewish philosopher who was an advocate of what is called Middle Platonism. That is to say, he was a follower of Plato, as Plato’s thought had evolved by the time of the first century.

In Middle Platonism, and particularly in the writings of Philo, the Logos (same word) is described as the reason or the mind of God. For Philo, the Logos, or God’s mind, is the creative principle behind the world. It serves as a sort of model for the world on which God creates the world – this sort of rational blueprint for the created physical world. Philo talks about the “kosmos noetos” or the rational or intelligible world that exists in the mind of God and serves as a pattern for the physical world that God then makes. This realm of the intelligible world, the ideas of God, are lodged in God’s Logos, or mind or reason. Philo would sometimes refer to the Logos as the Son of God or as God himself.

These Greek apologists, schooled as they were in Greek philosophy, connected Philo’s doctrine of the Logos with the doctrine of the Logos found in the prologue of the Gospel of John. They held that the Logos, prior to the creation of the world, existed immanently in God’s mind, that is to say, internal to God’s mind. It wasn’t as though the Logos was exterior to God; the Logos was the mind of God. It was his immanent reason or word. Before the creation of the world, this mind or Logos of God proceeded out of God – it went forth from God, and by the Logos then God created the world. It is a difficult concept to grasp. Think of it this way: Our thoughts are not things that are tangible. W cannot measure them nor see them, yet they are real. Our thoughts exist in our mind (which is different from our organ, the brain). We can eventually express our thoughts in the form of art, language, writing, etc. At which point our thoughts become more tangible, but not necessarily more real.

For John, the Logos is clearly not some sort of immanent principle in the world that gives it rational structure. Rather, the Logos is God himself – he transcends the world, and he creates the world, and the world therefore has its rational structure because it is a reflection of the Logos himself. And I think we would say, too, that John’s notion of the incarnation is just utterly unparalleled in Greek thought. Even in Philo – the idea that the Logos could take on flesh and become a human being is just without parallel. So the historization, if you will, of the Logos – that he dwelt among us, as John says – that is extraordinary.

Some scholars have suggested that maybe that the author of John’s Gospel read Philo. They were contemporaries. But I think, for the most part, scholars would say that while it cannot be proven that John knew Philo’s work, nevertheless John breathes the same atmosphere as Philo in what is written in the prologue, this atmosphere of Middle Platonism – of the Logos as the mind of God.

Here is a  passage from Athenagoras in his essay A Plea for the Christians, chapter 10:

Have a class member read:

“The Son of God is the Word of the Father (that is, the “Logos” of the Father) in Ideal Form and energizing power; for in his likeness and through him all things came into existence, which presupposes that the Father and the Son are one. Now since the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son by a powerful unity of Spirit, the Son of God is the mind and reason of the Father . . . He is the first begotten of the Father. The term is used not because he came into existence (for God, who is eternal mind, had in himself his word or reason from the beginning, since he was eternally rational) [so he is called “begotten” not because he came into existence, God has always had his mind, his reason; rather Athenagoras says] but because he came forth to serve as Ideal Form and Energizing Power for everything material. . . . The . . . Holy Spirit . . . we regard as an effluence of God which flows forth from him and returns like a ray of the sun.”

So the Holy Spirit is like the sunshine, the rays of the sun, that proceed out of the sun. They are not the same as the sun, but they are something that proceeds out of the sun.

On this Logos Christology, the Logos is begotten by the Father in the sense that the mind of God proceeds forth as a distinct individual, and it is through the Logos then that the world is created. This Logos doctrine of these early apologists then was taken up into Western theology by the Church Father Irenaeus and then became very influential.

In the year 319, Arius began to propagate the doctrine that the Son is not the same substance as the Father. Rather, the Son was created by the Father before the beginning of the world. So before God created the world, he created the Son, Christ. Therefore, Christ had a beginning and was not of the substance, or nature, of the Father. He was different – he was a created thing.

The reason that most theologians, like Athanasius, found Arius’ doctrine to be abhorrent was not, as Arius himself fancied, because he affirmed that the Son had a beginning. After all, some of the Logos theologians (these early Greek apologists) also thought that the Logos had a beginning. They thought that the Logos existed in God as the mind of God. He was immanent (the idea that the divine is seen to be manifested in or encompassing the material world) in the mind of God. Then he came forth and was begotten by the Father and then created the world. So even within orthodox circles, there was the idea that the Son might not be eternal as a distinct person but was begotten at a certain point of time. Arius thought, “Well, I am not saying anything different than these early apologists in saying that there was a time when the Son didn’t exist.”

But he missed the point. As Athanasius said, what was really objectionable about Arius’ doctrine was not that the Son had a beginning, whereas God is without a beginning. Rather, it was that Arius denied that the Logos existed even immanently in the mind of God prior to creation, so that the Logos was, in fact, a work of God. He was a creature that God made. He wasn’t begotten from the Father; he wasn’t of the substance of the Father; he was a work and therefore a creature – he was part of creation. That was what was objectionable. So Athanasius wrote that, on Arius’ view, the Son is

“a creature and a work, not proper to the Father’s essence” ( Orations against the Arians [1.3.9]).

One of the key terms in this early debate was the Greek term homoousios, which expressed the sameness of substance of the Son with the Father. Homo means “same” as in “homogenized milk” (it is all the same, the cream isn’t separated from the milk). Homo means “same” as in “homosexual” – same sex. Ousios comes from the Greek word ousia which means “substance.” So, to say that the Son and the Father are homoousios is to say they are the same substance. That is to say, they are the same nature, the same essence, or the same thing, the same being.

The doctrine of Arius, by contrast, was heteroousios. Hetero means “different” as in “heterosexual” – different sexes. So, to say that the Son and the Father were heteroousios meant that they had a different substance. They were not the same substance or essence. The Son was, in fact, a creation or a work that the Father had made and was therefore distinct from his nature.

The semi-Arians – those who were trying to find some sort of accommodation between these – proposed the word homoiousios. Homoiousios meant “similar in substance.” So the Father and the Son had a similar nature, similar substance, but it wasn’t the same. The whole difference in this controversy therefore lay in this single Greek letter “iota.” So when people say things like “I don’t give an iota about that!”, what that is referring to is this early Trinitarian controversy, where the whole difference between heresy and orthodoxy hung on this single iota – whether you thought that the Son was merely similar to the Father in substance or you thought he was the same substance. Because if he is the same, you affirmed the deity of Christ; according to Trinitarianism, if you say he is only similar, you have denied the deity of Christ.

First of all, the Son (and, by implication as well, the Holy Spirit) are declared to be of the same essence (homoousios) as the Father. Not homoiousios, as the semi-Arians claimed, but he is the substance of the Father. Therefore, the Son is declared to be begotten, not made. This is very significant. When things are begotten, the offspring have the nature of their parents – kittens are born of cats, dogs are begotten by dogs, cows beget cows. But if something is made, it is of a quite different nature than the artisan who made it. Michelangelo can make a statue, or someone can make a wood cabinet or make an automobile. That is different than their nature. In saying that the Son is begotten, not made, it is expressing that he is of the same nature as the Father – begotten from the Father.

Three persons one substance (most of this was stated earlier, but I wasn’t sure where it would fit best):

Before we go any further, we need to clarify what is meant by “person”. The modern concept of a person, what it means to be a person, actually sprang out of the trinitarian debates among the early Church Fathers. “Person”, in the modern psychological sense (and the way in which we are discussing it in this post) is a self-concsious individual, a center of self consciousness. The Avatar movie gives a very good illustration of one person with two natures, which is a sort of mirror image of the Trinity, which says there are three persons with one nature. Confused?

Tertullian, who lived from AD 150 – AD 225, a North African Church Father, coined the term persona to express the idea that there were three persons that were God, and he used the term trinitas for the first time to describe who God is. God is a trinity. A trinity of what? He is a trinity of persons. This came, then, to be expressed as the idea of three persons in one nature. That is an articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three persons who are the one God.

Very often, traditional-Christians will appeal to analogies to try to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. Most of the analogies that are suggested are inadequate. For example, here is one popular analogy for the Trinity: One man can be a father, a son, and a husband. That is like the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit being one God. I am one man, but I am a father, I am a son, and I am a husband. So I am three-in-one. Well, that is not an adequate analogy for the Trinity because that one man simply has these three different roles, but there is only one person involved there. That is not the doctrine of the Trinity – that there is one person who functions in these three different roles. That view was actually declared a heresy in the early Christian church; that is not what the doctrine asserts. Sometimes it is said that water (H2O) can take the form of either liquid, steam, or ice. It can be either a liquid, a gas, or a solid. That is the way the Trinity is – the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are all the same in essence, like H2O, which can be in these three different forms – liquid, steam, or gas. Again, the problem is that the liquid, the steam, and the gas are simply different states of the same substance successively. You can have water being in these different states, but that is not the doctrine of the Trinity. This again is a form of what is called “modalism”. And modalism was declared a heresy by the early Christian church. The doctrine is, there are three persons who constitute one God.”Three persons of one substance” We won’t get into substance because it would require us to get too much into Greek. But think of the dog that protects the gates of Hades, Cerberus

. In Greek mythology, there is a dog which is supposed to be guarding the gates of Hades named “Cerberus.” One of the tasks of Hercules is to subdue Cerberus at the gates of Hades. Now, Cerberus is no ordinary dog. He is a three-headed dog, and each of these heads is a fully functioning canine head. I think we can suppose, therefore, that Cerberus has three brains and that these brains are associated with three distinct states of consciousness, whatever it is like to be a dog. Whatever a dog-consciousness is like, Cerberus has three of them, not one of them. Therefore, even though Cerberus is a sentient being, he doesn’t have a unified consciousness; rather he has three consciousnesses – three centers of consciousness. Obviously, in order for Cerberus to be a biologically viable organism, as well as to be a good guard dog, there needs to be a considerable degree of cooperation and harmony among these three canine minds. Despite the diversity of his mental states, Cerberus is clearly one dog. He is one three-headed dog, a single biological organism which exemplifies a canine nature.

AGAIN – THE QUESTIONS WE ASK WILL DETERMINE THE ANSWERS WE RECEIVE:

“…Our questions are limited by our language and world view. If you were a physician in the middle-ages, you would ask God, “O.K., which of the four humors do I need to deplete from this body to heal it?” When God tries to bring us to a new paradigm, the previous paradigm has to collapse. We have to move on. It may seem as if we have been deceived, but God can only answer the questions we are ready to ask. That’s the great thing about Joseph Smith. He got better and better at asking questions…” (Terryl Givens, Engaging Gospel Doctrine podcast, episode 53)

“Brothers and sisters, as good as our previous experience may be, if we stop asking questions, stop thinking, stop pondering, we can thwart the revelations of the Spirit. Remember, it was the questions young Joseph asked that opened the door for the restoration of all things. We can block the growth and knowledge our Heavenly Father intends for us. How often has the Holy Spirit tried to tell us something we needed to know but couldn’t get past the massive iron gate of what we thought we already knew?” (Dieter Uchtdorf of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; click here to read talk)

Using the Greek words that come from the trinitarian debates:

homoousios, which expressed the sameness of substance
heteroousios meant that they had a different substance.
Homoiousios meant “similar in substance

How would we describe Jesus’ relationsip to God the Father?  homoousios, heteroousios, or homoiousios?

(this part was really fun as the different class members tried to speak these crazy Greek words and discuss why thought which word was more applicable to our theology.  Really good discussion. )

What is the difference between begot and create?
Does an artist beget or create her/his art?
Does a parent beget or create a child?

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