Unshakable🍒Faith

"Yea, come unto Christ... deny yourselves of all ungodliness... and love God with all your might, mind and strength... by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ..."

Here's how a conversation between a thoughtful Trinitarian and a thoughtful Latter-day Saint always goes: The Trinitarian brings up the Creeds. The Latter-day Saint says "I don't accept the Creeds as authoritative because they are unscriptural and unauthorized." The Trinitarian insists they are simply restatements of truths taught in scripture. This starts the back and forth from the Bible, mainly from the New Testament. The Trinitarian brings a verse saying, "I and my Father are one." The Latter-day Saint explains that "oneness" of the Godhead members doesn't necessarily imply a full Trinitarian consubstantiation. After all, Jesus also said husband and wife ought to be "one." And He prayed for His disciples to be one even as He and the Father are one. Surely that doesn't mean we all become consubstantial entities in the Trinity? Then the Trinitarian side talks about "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one." Then the Latter-day Saint responds with "Let us create man in our own image." Then the Trinitarian brings up "Philip, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father" and other verses. The Latter-day Saint then brings up verses about the express likeness: "this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ," the Gethsemane prayer—"not my will, but thine, be done," the baptism of Jesus, "why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God," "the Father is greater than I," and the idea that the Father knows the timing of the Second Coming but not the Son, etc. Then the Trinitarian responds with, "Well, He's carefully crafting His words for the people and it's the Person of the Son speaking, so in a sense it's true," and brings up "Before Abraham was, I AM," indicating Jesus is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. And the Latter-day Saint says, "Yes, we believe that, too. But that doesn't mean He is the same as the Father." Also, what of the first, second, and third-century disciples—some of whom walked with Jesus Himself—who didn't hold a Trinitarian formulation? Were they not Christian? And they go round and round, pulling up the Greek and the Aramaic, and both come away at the end more sure of their own positions than that the other's is the correct understanding. At the end of the day, an honest neutral observer of this discussion knows one thing: the Trinitarian theory is not self-evident from the Bible alone. As the Harper Bible Dictionary itself states, "the formal doctrine of the Trinity as it was defined by the great church councils of the fourth and fifth centuries is not to be found in the [New Testament]." There is ample room for an intelligent person to interpret the text either way, and neither is proven correct. The best a Trinitarian or Latter-day Saint can say about the Bible is "my position is evident to me." But through all this back and forth, the Latter-day Saint has been debating with one hand tied behind his back. Because although we love the Bible and accept it as the word of God, we are not reliant only on the Bible. We believe God has given additional clarification on the ambiguity of His inspired but imperfectly translated earlier words in the Holy Bible. God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith. And just as they appeared to the martyr Stephen, they appeared as two distinct Personages, with Jesus standing on the right hand of God. Then in the Book of Mormon and subsequent revelations, Jesus explicitly and directly set forth His nature, removing all ambiguity. And these truths are confirmed to us by personal revelation from God Himself. This is not a contradiction of the Bible, just a contradiction of the Creedalist understanding of the Bible. We respect our Catholic and Protestant brothers and sisters who read the Bible through a different lens and understand the verses differently than us. Even though their understanding is opposed to what we believe is substantiated in Holy Scripture, we recognize their efforts to follow the Savior to the best of their ability and wouldn't dare call them un-Christian for what we see as a mistaken view. And we respectfully ask others recognize the Bible is not self-evident on these matters and grant us the same grace we extend to them.