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Mormon Doctrine of Deity:
Irrefutable (and Unrefuted) Proof the Mormons are Right
About the Nature of God and Christ
By Bob Vukich (rvukich@hotmail.com)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches
God and Christ are separate and distinct beings, along with
the Holy Spirit, who are nevertheless one in PURPOSE, and
therefore often spoken of as One God.
There are a series of verses in the New Testament which
directly prove this to be true. There is no way an honest,
direct reading of the following verses can logically mean
there is only one god in essence, who is nevertheless
manifested in the 3 persons within that essence, namely the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
That is the generic definition of the doctrine of the
Trinity, the result of 3rd and 4th
Century AD religious and philosophical debate within
Christianity. With a slight doctrinal difference of whether
the Holy Spirit emanates from the Father alone or the Father
and Son, this is the defined concept of the Christian
godhead for virtually all Christian denominations,
protestant, Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.
Here are the verses:
But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and
saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand
of God. "Look," he said, "I see the heavens opened and
the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!"
Acts 7:55-56
So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was
taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.
Mark 16:19
But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the
right hand of the power of God."
Luke 22:69
Being therefore exalted at F14
the right hand of God, and having received from the Father
the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that
you both see and hear. Acts 2:33
F 14 or "by"
Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who
was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed
intercedes for us. Romans 8:34
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things
that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of
God. Col. 3:1
He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint
of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his
powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he
sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Hebrews 1:3
You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;
therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of
gladness beyond your companions."
Hebrews 1:9
But when Christ had offered for all time a single
sacrifice for sins, "he sat down at the right hand of God,"
Hebrews 10:12
looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,
who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured
the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at
the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:2
[Jesus Christ], who has gone into heaven and is at the
right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made
subject to him. 1 Peter 3:22
Evidence for the Trinity
There is only one passage in the entire New Testament
which clearly supports the Doctrine of the Trinity. It is 1
John 5:7-8. It reads:
7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the
Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are
one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth,
the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three
agree in one. (King James Version)
This is pretty compelling stuff. It should be. It was
forged and put into the Bible to specifically support the
Trinity. It is totally spurious. Here is how the NIV
translates these verses, after the discovery of the fraud
was made:
7 For there are three that testify: 8the[a]
Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in
agreement. [footnote ‘a’ describes the false text, then
comments: "(not found in any Greek manuscript before the
sixteenth century)"]
A detailed description of how this fraud took place can
be found at http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1186 or
perhaps the most respected NT Textual scholar of our age,
and not a Mormon, Bruce Metzer in "The Text of the New
Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration"(3rd
Enlarged Edition, Oxford Press, 1992), pages 62, 101-102,
291.
The other Biblical text is Matthew 28:19, which reads:
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost:
Trinitarians will point out it says "name", not "names".
While that is true, it is hard to get too excited about this
passage as proof. First, Matthew is not a very grammatically
consistent work in Greek. Indeed, it is generally supposed
to have been written in Hebrew, and translated into the
Greek by an unknown person. Asking the question, how many
names of the Father should one be baptized in illustrates
the point. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost are all singular
in their being. Likewise, they are being used as a statement
of authority, not unlike saying "Stop in the Name of the
Law!" There are actually many laws, of course, but it is
proper to use a singular ‘name’.
Since the passage is at best a neutral endorsement of
Trinitarianism or an LDS perspective, let’s see what we can
decide from clear statements of the Nature of God provided
so far.
God is separate in his being from
Jesus Christ.
In Acts 7:55-56, Luke specifically chooses to note that
Christ is standing to the right hand side of God in
presenting Stephen’s statements. It is a specific,
theological choice. We know this because Luke uses the
name/title Father of God nearly 2 dozen times, including 3
times in Acts.
In Acts 7, Luke uses the name God 11 times, and calls God
"the most High" once (vs. 48), then 3 times uses "God"
directly in describing Christ standing to God’s right side.
He calls Christ "the Just One", not God.
God has a physical location.
Christ is standing next to God. That cannot happen unless
there is a location where God ‘is’.
God looks like something.
This may sound funny, but it is sometimes stated by
Trinitarians that God is a Spirit which is invisible (based
on mis-readings of John 4:24 and the word "invisible", Col
1:15-16; 1 Tim 1:17; Heb 11:27). The correct translation of
John 4:24 is that God is Spirit, not "a" Spirit. It is an
attribute, just as "God is Love" (1Jn 4:8) and "God is
Light" (1Jn 1:5). Notice too, it is John making these "God
is x" type of statements. The issue of invisibility is
simply that God is not seen. It is not that there is nothing
of God to see, since we have the explicit statement in
Philippians 2:6 saying Christ appeared in Heaven identical
in his visible form as God. Here is the passage:
6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery
to be equal with God:
Here is what conservative Trinatarian A.T. Robertson
wrote of this passage in his book, Word Pictures of the New
Testament:
Being ( uparcwn).
Rather, "existing," present active participle of
uparcw.
In the form of God (en
morph qeou).
Morph
means the essential attributes as shown in the form. In his
preincarnate state Christ possessed the attributes of God
and so appeared to those in heaven who saw him.
Apparently in Heaven, where God and Christ are, God is
not invisible, since there would be no way to tell that
Christ had the same APPEARANCE as God if God is invisible.
We also have a very interesting event recorded at the end
of the Book of Revelation. In Rev. 22:8-9 we have John
confused by seeing the angel delivering the message. He goes
to worship the angel, thinking it is God.
8. And I John saw these things, and heard [them]. And
when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the
feet of the angel which shewed me these things. 9 Then saith
he unto me, See [thou do it] not: for I am thy fellowservant,
and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the
sayings of this book: worship God.
What does this angel look like? A man, John’s "fellowservant".
In any event, we know spirits look like men because in Luke
24:37-39, the Apostles see the resurrected Christ, and think
he is a spirit. But Christ tells them spirits lack flesh and
bones like he has. The conclusion is obvious spirits have
the form of a man.
Trinitarian Response to these Irrefutable
Facts: Silence.
These facts have been presented in email, bulletin board
and street conversations to literally uncounted anti-Mormons
and their supporters. I have never had any response beyond
this:
"...here is what we must conclude from these verses: God
and Christ are separate and distinct beings." That
inference falsely assumes a being cannot have more than one
manifestation, or that that multiple persons can be in one
being and separately appear. (Aaron
Shafovaloff responding to a discussion of this subject at
www.Promormon.blogspot.com dated Oct.14, 2004 under "If you
pass along a lie…")
The author responded as follows:
Bob the Anti-Anti said...
I assume nothing. I am reading what he said. He said he
saw God, and Christ standing to the right of God. He did not
go into a philosophical treatise about the obvious
impossibility of God having a physical location, which Rob
denies in his highly flawed expose'. If you are saying he
could have seen lots of appearances of God, that is fine, as
an opinion. But it is not Biblical. He says Christ is
standing next to God. Since this is how it is repeatedly
described more than a dozen times in the New Testament, I am
inclined to agree with the Bible. Nowhere does God discuss
having a physical, locational manifestation in multiple
places, so what you are suggesting is just new doctrine and
an unBiblical one at that. I doubt I can convince you of
that, but I think someone reading the Bible sans a
pre-imposed theology would find my perspective more
consistent with scripture. Thanks for the comment though,
and if you have some support for your perspective out of
scripture, I would think it would be helpful to this
discussion.
There has never been a response since.
Attempts to Avoid the Argument
There is an anti-Mormon webpage which has tried to create
a "strawman" argument about this passage. By using a
mistranslation, they then assert the passage actually is a
problem for Mormons as well by writing:
"Finally, why did Luke state that Jesus was "standing on
the right hand of God" (King James Version, which is what
LDS use)? LDS want to interpret this literally, but only to
a point. They too must treat this figuratively in some sense
otherwise Jesus would actually be standing on the
Father's right hand, and then we'd wonder if Jesus left
stretch marks on the Father's hand by doing this ."
(http://www.mormoninfo.org/index.php?id=109)
It is difficult to conceive of a less sincere and less
accurate discussion of the LDS position. Who are these
Mormons concerned about this being God’s hand getting
stretched? Which Mormon author has cautioned his LDS readers
to be careful not to interpret the scripture too literally?
None of course. When the King James Bible was written, it
was a perfectly valid and correct use of the English
language to note someone is "on" their right hand, to
indicate they are directionally to someone’s right side.
This is still acceptable, though less common today. We say
"a village is on the sea", not meaning it is magically
floating, but it is adjacent to the sea ( http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=on
see under 1. c under the definition of "on" as a
preposition.)
The underlying Greek text in Acts 7:55-56 is unequivocal
in the meaning being "to the right side". The Greek word
here, which the author of the website knows because he and I
have discussed this in the past, is dexion,
and means in context "right", as in direction. To the right
side. The word for hand, which Luke uses in Luke 6:6 with
the word dexion, is
Xeir or
Cheir. Verses 55-56
are not even remotely speaking of an anatomical right hand.
He does not mean right hand. It is the King James English
meaning of 'to the right hand side'. He means "at the right
hand" or "right side", which is how nearly every translation
since the KJV does it (see NIV, NRSV, RSV, CEV, Darby, REB,
ESV, NCV, TEV, etc.)
Luke uses the preposition ek,
translated "to", which in Greek grammar answers the question
"where is something?" (BDAG, page 296, #2). In this case,
where is Christ? To the right, directionally, of God. This
is no different than those who continue to insist 1 John
5:7-8 as found in the KJV is accurate, when it clearly is
not.
That is the story. It is every bit as ignored as John
1:1-2. No question that the Word and God are two distinct
Gods. No Trinitarian doctrine to be found there. The Word is
with God, and the Word has itself the Nature of God. To make
it clear there are two Gods spoken of, John then reiterates
"The Same was in the beginning with God" In John 1:18 he
re-clarifies this by saying: "No one has seen God at any
time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the
Father, He has explained Him." (NASB)
The Mormon concept of deity is correct. As the early
Christian Irenaeus noted when discussing the idea of men
becoming like God, it is through God’s grace and love that
man, created as we are, can go from being mortal to immortal
and have an uncreated nature (Iren. IV, 38:4) There is no
question early Christians and Jews believed our ultimate
destiny was to become like God.
Did God know of other Gods? Isaiah 44:8 says "no", but
then God Himself calls others "gods" in a real, delegated
sense: AND the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made
thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy
prophet. Ex.7:1. See also Ex. 4:16.
So like Elijah of old, I laugh at the modern priests of
Baal, and challenge you to answer. Maybe your god is schizo,
and answering himself. Try to get him to speak up, because
the silence is deafening. The Mormons are right. |
