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You are, of course, right. In fact, for this cause, I'm not convinced there is a single "true church," but rather believe in the universal Christian church, made up of all true believers. I doubt that any human denomination got all doctrine perfectly right. So, how wrong can we be--especially about important matters--and be okay? It truly is an open question.

Sorry to respond to my own post, but this thought came to mind: The LDS answer would be to pray and seek a witness of the Spirit on this. Of course, you have the doctrine of three heavenly kingdoms to guide you...probably meaning that most of us who are "sincere but wrong," will end up in the Terrestial Kingdom. Nevertheless, especially to Candypurple...pray, and ask God--perhaps for each soul you are concerned about (including, first and foremost our own, of course)--what will happen if I/they am/are wrong? How can I discern better, hear better, and help others more effectively?

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In a vacuum it might seem like semantics, but considered in light of the doctrine of humanity's nature, the variance becomes clear.

1. Is God the one God, creator of heaven and earth and all that is, eternally alone in his supremacy, his eternal nature, and his position as God over all that is?

2. Or is he three gods working together to fashion out of eternal matter, our world, Lord over us and our planet in this dispensation, preparing us to become Lords ourselves.

Both visions can be majestic, inspiring, beautiful religious belief systems...but they are different.

I agree, they both can be majestic and different. The real question is: will we use it as an excuse to separate ourselves from one another? To say, "I am of Paul" and another, "I am of Peter" becomes the standard for centuries of religious wars and contention.

I think we can unite in the areas we agree, and show respect where we disagree.

After all, in my belief, all good Christians are saved by the grace of Christ's atonement and at a minimum will enjoy Jesus' presence in the Terrestrial Heaven. That's something wonderful and majestic, IMO.

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Hi Bytor-- you just repeated again your thoughts that creeds are an abomination. Although your comment may be directed to someone other than myself, I take such quote in a negative manner. The Trinity is an important doctrine of mine and many Christians. I know we disagree on that which is ok, but please consider how you word things as investigators like myself are here on this board-especially this section of the board. We may not have prophets in the Catholic Church and other churches-but we believe the Holy Spirit is at work in our faith community as The Holy Spirit is in yours. Creeds were not thought of hastely and those that brought them together did not always agree, but I believe the holy spirit was active in such work. That may not be "revelation," but I believe they are no less the work of the Holy Spirit in a community of faith.

How would members of the LDS Church feel--if I insulted a basic teaching of the LDS Church (as some come on this board and do) and said my comments were only directed toward one member? Would the other members of the LDS Church also feel hurt by such comments--I think so.

Perhaps such a discussion between LDS members alone- would be better held on the gospel section of this board-which is less frequented by investigators such as myself.

I would like to welcome you to my door sometime as an LDS Missionary or member---but- I will be ready with my "Triple" and tons of questions.

-Carol--A Catholic Investigator

Hi Carol,

Again....I apologize. :) I should have reworded my comments as well....... particularly on threads where investigators are seeking answers. I actually meant to reword and delete or rephrase to represent my thought which simply was............ that I think it is important to understand and accept the nature of the Godhead as taught by our faith if you are considering becominga member. Thanks for pointing out my absent mindedness:D and once again I hope there are no hard feelings!

Best regards,

Bytor

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maybe i should reword my question. Can one be a monotheist mormon because in my mind it seems that mormonism is polythesist(im not trying to sound insulting please correct me if im wrong) and i guess growing up in the christian west polytheism is a hard pill to swallow

Shadowhunter,

I believe that My Father in Heaven is literally my Father and is God. I believe that Jesus Christ is my elder brother and the only begotten son of God. I believe that Jesus Christ is a god also. I believe that the Holy Spirit is a god as well. Together....they are one God and form the Godhead. Do we believe that other gods exist? Yes. Are they our God...our Father....our creator....or is our understanding or belief that they exist essential to our salvation......No. I don't know where you are at in investigating the church.....but these type of questions can get you off course. If you are meeting with missionaries.....I suggest that you pray about what they have taught you and attend church. Pray about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.......if that is true and the Spirit will testify to all honest and humble seekers......then everything else is true also.

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well as for my status on investaging the church right now im just reading the BOM and praying about it on my own. i also planing on attending church with one of my best friends and he said the missonaries wouldnt mind talking to me sometime

Meeting with the Missionaries would be awesome. When you attend church...stay for all three hours and attend Gospel Principles.....it is the class for new members and investigators.

Deep doctrines....particularly LDS doctrines can really be confusing. It is best to start with the basics and build from there. If or when you join the church....it will be because of the Holy Spirit and you will know without any doubt when it occurs. When that happens....things will begin to fit in place more smoothly. The answer to the real question......is this church what it claims to be....the restored church of Jesus Christ....will come from God and you will recognize that the answer is from him.

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We worship no God but our Father, the God of our Universe.

Is that to say there are no other universes? No. But the problem with broadening the perspective of religion that inconceivably is that it naturally boggles the human mind.

Are we to say that God is alone in Eternity? That He is a lone, all-powerful being without authentic relationship to any similar being? No. Family is an eternal concept, and our earthly families are microcosms of His life. But as I claim no earthly father but my own, so we have no God but our literal Eternal Father. He is the God of our universe, and we need not preoccupy ourselves with any other potential beings, because they do not deal with us here. We do not worship them, and we do not need to know about them, except to say that family life is God's life.

We are monotheistic in that we worship only the true and living God. We simply have with that worship additional understanding about the nature of God.

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maybe i should reword my question. Can one be a monotheist mormon because in my mind it seems that mormonism is polythesist(im not trying to sound insulting please correct me if im wrong) and i guess growing up in the christian west polytheism is a hard pill to swallow

Sure one can be a montheistic Mormon. Absolutely. I myself am a panentheistic Mormon (NOT pantheistic). They still let me go to the temple and everything!

HiJolly

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What I found to be true for me in deciding to join the Church -----

I had many questions about the doctrine but the one question that was answered was should I join this church and the answer was yes.

And as for the questions about doctrine I have brought what I was taught in my early years and had it added upon by LDS doctrine. Do I understand all that I'm being taught right now -- not by a longshot! However, I do know that I am learning 'line upon line', precept upon precept' and I accept that way of learning.

Heavenly Father gives me the answers to the hard stuff when he knows I'm ready and usually I'm ready when I've grasped the little stuff.

He knows each of us individually and will treat us with that respect.:)

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Sure one can be a montheistic Mormon. Absolutely. I myself am a panentheistic Mormon (NOT pantheistic). They still let me go to the temple and everything!

HiJolly

im just curious what does panentheistic and panthesistic mean? and thanks for all your help to you and everyone but you espeacally ive taken alot of time to help me out
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In a vacuum it might seem like semantics, but considered in light of the doctrine of humanity's nature, the variance becomes clear.

1. Is God the one God, creator of heaven and earth and all that is, eternally alone in his supremacy, his eternal nature, and his position as God over all that is?

2. Or is he three gods working together to fashion out of eternal matter, our world, Lord over us and our planet in this dispensation, preparing us to become Lords ourselves.

Both visions can be majestic, inspiring, beautiful religious belief systems...but they are different.

There is only but one truth and that is up to you find that answer. If a young boy can achieve this, I do believe any brother or sister upon this probationary plain can achieve the same.

Now, it has nothing to do with semantics but whether we truly understand the corporal of the Godhead.

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Pantheistic: believes and worships many gods.

Panentheistic: believes there are many gods, but worships only one.

If you ask a Jew or Muslim, they would tell you that Trinitarians worship multiple gods, regardless of the definitions given for the Trinity, it still has 3 persons, each a god. And that is enough for many to view the Trinity as plural.

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Trinity, it still has 3 persons, each a god. And that is enough for many to view the Trinity as plural.

That is incorrect. The Trinity defines the Godhead as 3 persons, each is God. The 3 persons are one God. The trinity does not define each member of the Godhead as three gods. That is an extremely incorrect view of the Trinity.
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Pantheistic: believes and worships many gods.

Panentheistic: believes there are many gods, but worships only one.

I think it's:

polytheistic: believes/worships many gods

monolatry: believes in many gods, but devotes worship to one

kathenotheistic: many gods, but only worships one at a time. (the one they worship can change due to whatever factors: battle between gods, etc..)

henotheistic: many gods, but only one is supreme (may worship a different god other than the supreme one).

pantheistic: everything is god. (this is actually a curious/strange version of monotheism)

panentheistic: God is in everything and everything is in God. Kind of like Luke Skywalker stuff I think, or at least that's the mental image I get.

Deism: There is a god but he has little to nothing to do with the universe. (or polydeism: same thing, just many gods instead of one)

Atheism: no god

Agnostic: nobody knows

Cosmotheism: Man is the creator and Ultimate Will of the cosmos. Sounds like Oprah stuff.

I think that hits most of the options. There are variations within those. Some beliefs may overlap a little depending on the consistency of the person who adheres to one of those.

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THANK YOU.

People have no idea how the doctrine of the Trinity works these days.

LOL...now that brings back memories of Stephen Robinson book called "Are Mormons Christians?" In one of the chapters, he goes to great length in explaining the Trinity viewpoint.

It has been said that since Latter-day Saints do not accept the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, it follows that they cannot be considered Christians. Here again the heart of the argument lies in the definition of its terms. Specifically the logical problem with this argument is that non-LDS Christians usually define the term trinity ambiguously. They habitually, and most often unconsciously, equate the biblical teaching on the nature of the Godhead with the later philosophical statement formulated at the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451-the Nicene Creed. But these two ways of perceiving God are simply not equivalent.

If by "the doctrine of the Trinity" one means the New Testament teaching that there is a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost, all three of whom are fully divine, then Latter-day Saints believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. It is as simple as that. The Latter-day Saints' first article of faith, written by Joseph Smith in 1842, states, "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost." Baptisms in the Church are performed "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (see D&C 20:73). The prayer of blessing on the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is addressed to God the Eternal Father in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, to the end that those who partake may have his Spirit to be with them (see D&C 20:77-79). Latter-day Saints thoroughly agree with the biblical doctrine of the threefold nature of the Godhead and of the divinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

However, if by "the doctrine of the Trinity" one means the doctrine formulated by the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon and elaborated upon by subsequent theologians and councils-that God is three coequal persons in one substance or essence-then Latter-day Saints do not believe it. They do not believe it, because it is not biblical. Words central to the orthodox understanding of the Trinity-words like coequal, consubstantial, and circumincession, or the word trinity itself, for that matter-are not found in scripture. The term trinity (Latin trinitas) was first used by Tertullian around the beginning of the third century A.D. The Nicene and Chalcedonian Fathers tried to find scriptural terms for their new formulae but were unable to do so.

The scriptures themselves do not offer any explanation of how the threeness and the oneness of God are related. The biblical writers were singularly uninterested in that problem or in questions dealing with God's essence, his substance, or the philosophical definition of his nature. These later concerns are elaborations upon the biblical doctrine of God, elaborations formulated to answer in philosophically respectable terms the questions and objections of Hellenistic thinking concerning the primitive Christian doctrine. Christian intellectuals of the fourth and fifth centuries felt that the biblical language was too unsophisticated and inadequate for this purpose, and so they attempted to supplement and improve it with their own best efforts.

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im just curious what does panentheistic and panthesistic mean? and thanks for all your help to you and everyone but you espeacally ive taken alot of time to help me out

Gospel according to HiJolly:

Pantheistic means you believe in and perhaps worship many Gods. I do not believe this, but some people do.

Panentheistic means you believe that all things we can observe (and all things we CAN'T observe) come from God and are an aspect of God.

In the beginning, God said "Let there be light", and there was light. If you look at Mormon doctrine, we believe that that light always existed, for it is matter of a sort, and matter cannot be created nor destroyed. So where did it come from? Where was it before God said "let there be light"?

I believe that it came from God. He IS Eternal, and Eternal is His name. And I believe that matter came from God as He modified His Glory into light (energy) and from thence to matter. Combined with intelligence, it is held by covenant with God to its various forms as we perceive it around us.

Just my opinion, and this is why I am a panentheist. :D

HiJolly

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Snippet....Pythagoras believed, everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality. Through mathematics, everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic patterns or cycles. According to Iamblichus, Pythagoras once said that "number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons."

Pythagoras was the first man to call himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom,[2] and Pythagorean ideas exercised a marked influence on Plato

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THANK YOU.

People have no idea how the doctrine of the Trinity works these days.

Thats because there are many different versions,

don't believe me? go to a mainstream Christian message board where people from different denominations post and ask them to define the Trinity.

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More information concerning the Trinity in the New Testament..

It is a matter of record that the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity is a postbiblical development-it is simply not found in the New Testament. In one of the major Christian treatments of the doctrine of the Trinity, Jesuit scholar Edmund J. Fortman, having examined the various parts of the New Testament individually, notes that "there is no trinitarian doctrine in the Synoptics or Acts." He also observes that in the New Testament "nowhere do we find any trinitarian doctrine of three distinct subjects of divine life and activity in the same Godhead," and that "in John there is no trinitarian formula." Concerning the letters of Paul, Fortman states:

These passages give no doctrine of the Trinity, but they show that Paul linked together Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They give no trinitarian formula... but they offer material for the later development of trinitarian doctrine [Paul] has no formal trinitarian doctrine and no clear-cut realization of a trinitarian problem, but he furnishes much material for the later development of a trinitarian doctrine.

After examining all parts of the New Testament, Fortman concludes that the classical doctrine of the Trinity is not biblical:

There is no formal doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament writers, if this means an explicit teaching that in one God there are three co-equal divine persons. But the three are there, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and a triadic ground plan is there, and triadic formulas are there .... The Biblical witness to God, as we have seen, did not contain any formal or formulated doctrine of the Trinity, any explicit teaching that in one God there are three co-equal divine persons.

Latter-day Saints couldn't agree more Biblical theology, like LDS theology, affirms the threefold nature of the Godhead; but, also like LDS theology, biblical theology lacks any indication of a Nicene understanding. The scholarly consensus is further affirmed in Harper's Bible Dictionary: "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.'"

In his sketch of Paul's theology J. Fitzmyer notes that the Apostle's views as stated in the biblical text are unclear and undeveloped from a post-Nicene point of view: "This double series of texts manifests Paul's lack of clarity in his conception of the relation of the Spirit to the Son. Paul shares with the OT a more fluid notion of personality than the later theological refinements of nature, substance, and person. His lack of clarity should be respected for what it is and be regarded only as the starting point of the later development.'" In other words, from an orthodox perspective Paul didn't understand the nature of God as clearly as the theologians of the fourth century. If Paul's views had first been proposed after the Council of Nicaea, they would have been viewed as inadequate or even as defective. The Latter-day Saints prefer to think that Paul's conception of the nature of God is clearer and more authoritative than all the theologians and philosophers after him combined. After all, it was Paul that spoke with the risen Lord and was caught up to the third heaven, not the theologians (Acts 9:3-6:2 1 Cor. 12:2-4).

Furthermore, even orthodox writers and theologians now admit the difficulty of identifying the post-Nicene view as biblical:

Trinitarian discussion, Roman Catholic as well as other, presents a somewhat unsteady silhouette. Two things have happened. There is the recognition on the part of exegetes and Biblical theologians, including a constantly growing number of Roman Catholics, that one should not speak of Trinitarianism in the New Testament without serious qualification. There is also the closely parallel recognition on the part of historians of dogma and systematic theologians that when one does speak of an unqualified Trinitarianism, one has moved from the period of Christian origins to, say, the last quadrant of the 4th century.

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Snippet....Pythagoras believed, everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality. Through mathematics, everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic patterns or cycles. According to Iamblichus, Pythagoras once said that "number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons."

Pythagoras was the first man to call himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom,[2] and Pythagorean ideas exercised a marked influence on Plato

i could be mistaken but im pretty sure it was socrates who was the first to call himself a philosopher
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