LDS: Ravi and the Godhead

This will be the conclusion of my report of B. and my meeting with the Mormons this past Wednesday. But first, following up from my recent post regarding the Most Improbable Dialogue article, here is the video of Ravi Zacharias' 2004 visit to the Tabernacle.

What struck me most was the following statement by Fuller Seminary president Richard Mouw, who played a significant role in organizing the event:

"I know that I have learned much in this continuing dialogue, and I am now convinced that we evangelicals have often seriously misrepresented the beliefs and practices of the Mormon community. Indeed, let me state it bluntly to the LDS folks here this evening: we have sinned against you. The God of the Scriptures makes it clear that it is a terrible thing to bear false witness against our neighbors, and we have been guilty of that sort of transgression in things we have said about you. We have told you what you believe without making a sincere effort first of all to ask you what you believe."

When we were speaking with the Mormons, the topic of Mormon-evangelical dialogue also came up. B. and my friend J. attends Bethany Bible College, and apparently a Mormon was invited there to explain his beliefs some time ago. The missionaries, after asking some questions about the fellow, thought that they knew him. Asked how he felt about speaking at the Bible College Elder C., who in my mind is often the most forthright of the two, thought for a second and replied, "He said he was pretty scared." I know I would be scared if I were heading to BYU to defend my beliefs.

And now, regarding the Godhead:

Of the differences I have identified to date between LDS and mainstream Christian belief, two stand out as especially important: (1) the legitimacy of the restored priesthood (including the authenticity of the Book of Mormon), and (2) the nature of the Godhead. B. and I had already discussed (1) to some extent, as detailed in my previous post. We thereafter turned to some discussion of (2).

I asked the missionaries if they could reiterate briefly for B., and for my remembrance, some of what they had told me previously about the Godhead. They were quite willing to do so, and put forth the following points:

1. God is identified as Elohim of the Old Testament. They often call him "Heavenly Father."
   
2. Jesus, who is the son of Heavenly Father, is Jehovah/Yahweh of the Old Testament (the JW's would have a heyday with this).
3. Jehovah (the tetragrammaton, YHWH, usually translated nowadays as "LORD" in all caps)  in the OT was the spirit of Jesus before being born into a body. The LDS believe that everybody existed as a spirit before having a body, including Jesus and God.
4. The person of the Holy Ghost is the third part of the Godhead. (I have read that the Holy Ghost, the person, is also considered by the LDS as different from the Holy Spirit, that is the spirit of God. I did not detect this distinction in our discussion, but I expect I will ask about it sooner or later.)
5. These three distinct parts are "United in Purpose".

I think it is evident from these points that the LDS belief on the Godhead departs significantly from traditional Christian doctrine. Interestingly, I think the above is compatible with the wording – though perhaps not the intent – of the Apostle's Creed.  In the time we had left, B. and I questioned the Elders on some of these points.

Our first question was about the unity of the Godhead. The LDS and Christian doctrines have in common that God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are divided, and unified to some extent, but from point (5) above we see that theirs is a slightly different concept of unity. Elder C. expressed the LDS concept of unity clearly (I think he was quoting but I forget), saying it means that "Whatever circumstances in whatever time, they will all come to the same conclusion."

Both B. and I were surprised about the whole Jehovah = Jesus thing. The Mormons substantiated the belief with verses such as Psalm 3:8, that says, "Salvation belongs to the LORD; your blessings be on your people" (ESV). Since salvation belongs to YHWH, and we know it was Jesus who ultimately saves mankind, the only way this verse (and others like it) makes sense is if YHWH is the same person as Jesus. This requires, by the Mormon understanding that Jesus isn't God, that Jesus still be YHWH and YHWH not be God. (Convoluted, no?) After they brought up and explained this example, I quietly looked up and said, "But you can see why a passage like this would cause absolutely no problem for us and our Trinity thing, right?" They laughed and agreed.

As I suspected above, the JW's have complained about the YHWH = Jesus thing. The Elders told us a few stories about this, and took particular delight in the story of one JW woman who repeatedly criticised the LDS leaders about the YHWY = Jesus belief, and eventually went to Salt Lake City to harangue them about it. One of the Apostles wrote to her and said that if she continued he would speak out publicly and "break" her beliefs. (Elder M. said "crush" her beliefs originally, but Elder. C corrected him to what I think is a more poetic wording anyway.) From what they told us, he did just that. (I may have some details of the story wrong, but the gist of it should be right.) Apparently there is a document detailing the LDS arguments for the YHWH = Jesus belief, written specifically against the beliefs of JW's, called the "Jehovah's Witness Shuffle". I had to ask why it was called that, but the missionaries had no idea.

We went through a few passages regarding the separateness of God and Jesus. I think the most convincing of these to me was the vision of Stephen while he was being stoned (Acts 7:55-56), where he sees God and Jesus in heaven as two separate people. This parallels the experience reported by Joseph Smith, Jr. of seeing God and Jesus as separate beings in Doctrine and Covenants 76:19-24.

By contrast,  B. brought us to John 1:1, which is a very clear statement of the unity of God and Jesus given that Jesus is the Logos (translated "the Word"). B., the Mormons and I all believe that "the Word" refers to Jesus, and so the passage seemed clearly to indicate their identity despite the separateness:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (ESV)

B. impressed the Mormons by having me recite it in Greek, on which count I lucked out because this is the only verse I can recite in Greek. the Mormons attempted to reconcile the verse with their beliefs by suggesting that the Logos was only being called a god in the sense that they believe all humans will become gods, and not that He was being equated with Heavenly Father. At the time, I thought I remembered that the language reinforced the identity of God and the Logos, related to the Greek word for God, "theos", lacking a definite article in the phrase "the Word was God."

It turns out, I don't know what I'm talking about. After examining the Greek and some online searching, it seems that many scholars entirely unconnected with the LDS church support the translation "a God" rather than "God" because of the lacking definite article. The wikipedia article on John 1:1 is well referenced regarding the dispute. I need to look further into the issue, but a-priori I think there is a basis for a translation of John 1:1 that is compatible with the LDS belief, and so we will have to turn to other verses to support the identity in substance of God and Jesus.

That is where we ended our discussion for the evening, with an agreement to meet again at my apartment the following Wednesday.

I have asked the missionaries if we can, at our next meeting, go over the Apostles' Creed, and see where exactly they disagree with Christian orthodoxy. Also, the missionaries left me with a list of scriptures supporting their beliefs in the Godhead that I will read through before next week. It seems to me, right now, that we are engaged in two fruitful discussions about the very differences between our beliefs and theirs, and I look forward to more of the same.

I am kind of thinking that I would like to hang out with the missionaries a little more. We played baseball, did yardwork, and went out to lunch together one day in September, and I think Elder M. in particular enjoyed it greatly. They have plenty of fellowship within their own church, but I think there is great value not only in interfaith dialogue but also in interfaith fellowship, and I will be looking for such opportunities in the future.

Also, FYI, there is an article by the past LDS President Gordon B. Hinkley that details the Mormon conceptions of the Godhead quite well.