I’ve been keeping up with a number of LDS blogs in my feed reader. For a complete list of the ones I read, see my del.icio.us “mormonism blog” category.

What struck me initially was the number of theologically liberal Mormon blogs there are when compared with the number of conservative ones. These are the kind of Mormons who read Dialogue and Sunstone; the kind who might be feminists and pray to Heavenly Mother; the kind who might agree with Grant Palmer that the Book of Mormon had its authorship solely in Joseph Smith. These are people who still hold to their Mormon beliefs and heritage while denying or downplaying vital doctrines and speaking out against church leadership.

Granted, there are a few strictly conservative Mormons out there who are defending their faith vigorously (Jeff Lindsay’s Mormanity comes immediately to mind), but they seem harder to find. Are they just less outspoken? Did I stumble across the wrong link lists in my initial searches? If anyone can point me to where all the conservative Mormon blogs are, I’d be much obliged.

Anyway, one of the reasons I started this post was to mention a meme practiced amongst LDS bloggers. It seems popular for LDS blogs to assume a title once used by LDS newspapers or other periodicals. For instance, there are LDS blogs called Times and Seasons, Millennial Star, and Nauvoo Neighbor. Since I discovered this custom, I’ve jokingly contemplated renaming my blog The Nauvoo Expositor ((For those who may not be familiar with LDS history, The Nauvoo Expositor was an anti-Mormon newspaper founded by some former members of the LDS church. It printed only one edition in the summer of 1844, and was promptly shut down by Joseph Smith and the Nauvoo city council on the grounds that it was a “public nuisance.” The incident led to charges of censorship and suppression of free speech and was the primary reason Smith was being held in Carthage Jail at the time of his assassination.)).

Of course, that’s not an appropriate name for this blog at all. I routinely speak out against vitriolic anti-Mormon literature and I try not to spend all my time here talking about Mormonism. Nevertheless, I think it would be fun to stir up a little controversy. If nothing else it would certainly be a quick way to get some attention from the Mormon blog community. I’m too chicken to do it, though, and that’s probably why I’ll never have a large readership here.

I want to thank everyone for the great feedback I received from my previous post on “Mormon Literature”:http://www.joeyday.org/2005/03/29/mormon-literature. There was a lot of information provided, but it gives me a great place to start and answers some questions about what I should focus on if I want to get a balanced and clear picture of Mormon doctrine.

Following up on that post, I want to mention that “English transcripts”:http://lds.org/conference/sessions/display/0,5239,49-1-520,00.html of the 175th Annual General Conference are now available on the LDS church website.

Also on a related note, I ordered a copy of Preach My Gospel from the church distribution center. The “ldscatalog.com”:http://www.ldscatalog.com website was crawling along Saturday afternoon following Elder Scott’s announcement of the new resource, but I was able to get in and place my order late Saturday evening. I didn’t expect it to arrive so soon given the demand is probably high right now, but it arrived in the mail yesterday. It appears to be a very handy resource — to the point that I _almost_ wish I was a missionary again. There’s much more information provided than was ever a part of the six discussions. This book alone will give me much to read and study.

I have in my hands a copy of Martha Nibley Beck’s book, Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith. When I noticed it on the shelf last night at the Christian bookstore where I work, I immediately pulled it and told the owner of the store we probably shouldn’t be selling it. I’m not sure why I never warned him about this book. Somehow I just assumed it would never show up.

Nevertheless, here it is sitting in front of me. I told the owner I would look it over at home and let him know what I think about it. I’m 99% certain I’m going to tell him to send it straight back to the distributor.

I thought about actually reviewing it here, but I don’t think that’s necessary. It’s a bunch of hogwash from a new age “life coach” with repressed memories. It propagates every stereotype of Mormonism you’ve ever heard and even starts a few new ones. Even if all it’s vitriol were true, it’s certainly not Christian, so what place does it have in a Christian bookstore?

I started a series on the Trinity almost two months ago. I’m going to continue it making use of a concise little book (just under a hundred pages, not counting the indices) I discovered last year called Making Sense of the Trinity: 3 Crucial Questions, by Millard J. Erickson ((I would highly recommend this book to any reader. It lays down a number of compelling biblical, rational, and practical reasons for believing in the Trinity. If you have the time, however, and wish to read something of more substance, the author recommends his own God in Three Persons: A Contemporary Interpretation of the Trinity.)). When I say “make use of” I mean simply that I will follow Erickson’s outline and ask the same three “crucial” questions. I’ll try to provide my own answers to the questions without simply regurgitating Erickson’s responses, though I may throw in a quote here or there.

And so, I turn to the first crucial question: “Is the doctrine of the Trinity biblical?”

A Brief Definition

First off, since I started this series with the premise that Mormons (among other groups) frequently misunderstand and/or misrepresent Trinitarianism, I should explain what the Trinity really is. Short and simple, Trinitarians believe that God is one, yet three.

Getting more specific, we say that God has eternally existed as one being in three persons. Though this definition looks simple, the language used here is very carefully chosen, and gets even more precise if you study the latin and greek words used originally to describe the Trinity. English doesn’t do it justice, but the early church took great pains to define their terms as accurately as possible. I’ll elaborate on this in a later post in this series. For now, the above definition will suffice.

There are three important biblical aspects that combine to form our doctrine of the Trinity. They are:

1. The Unity of God

The most explicit statement in all of scripture regarding God’s oneness is the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” This statement is considered the central tenet of Judaism. It is followed immediately by the command, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” This reminds Jews and Christians that our allegience is not to be divided between God and anyone/anything else. Dividing God into multiple substances or beings would divide our loyalty and therefore corrupt our worship ((Incidentally, this is also the reason there was only one temple in all of Israel. Other cultures were building multiple temples to their multiple gods, but God said he would put his name in Jerusalem, and that all people should go up to Jerusalem to worship the Lord there (Deut. 12:5; Deut. 12:13-14; Deut. 16:5-6). This was to symbolize for Israel that there was only one God.)).

2. The Deity of the Three

In seeming contrast to the assertion that God is one, the scriptures (mostly the New Testament, but in some places even the Old Testament) identify three distinct persons as being fully God:

• God the Father –To my knowledge no one claims that Heavenly Father is not God. For consistency, however, note that Jesus uses “Heavenly Father” and “God” interchangeably: Matt. 6:26, 30, 32; John 6:45; John 20:17.
• God the Son — Isaiah 9:6 equates the Messiah with “Mighty God”. New Testament examples of Jesus being equated with God include John 1:1-5; Phil. 2:5-11; and Heb. 1:3-14.
• God the Holy Spirit — In Acts 5:1-4, a lie against the Holy Spirit amounts to a lie against God. Paul seems to find “God” and “Holy Spirit” interchangeable in 1 Cor. 3:16-17 and 1 Cor. 6:19-20.

3. The Three-in-oneness of God

There are numerous places in scripture where the three persons in the Trinity are grouped together: Matt. 28:19; 2 Thes. 2:13-14; 1 Cor. 12:4-6; 2 Cor. 13:14. Jesus’ baptism ((In my last post in this series, I mentioned a devotional booklet that used Christ’s baptism as a demonstration of the doctrine of the Trinity. For another example of Christ’s baptism used to defend the Trinity, see the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article for Trinity.)) is another example of a three-in-one passage (Matt. 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22).

These scriptures and many others seem to affirm that where one member of the Trinity is working, the other two are also working. The three persons of the Trinity do not work alone, but each takes part in some aspect of every work God accomplishes.

The three-in-oneness of God also denotes an equality among the persons. They are co-eternal and there exists perfect love and unity between the persons. None of the persons is necessarily subordinate to the others.

Is the Doctrine of the Trinity Biblical?

Is the doctrine of the Trinity biblical? Well, I hope the reader can see that at least the three concepts I’ve listed above are biblical. I believe the doctrine of the Trinity, which proceeds directly from these three points, is therefore transitively biblical.

It’s important to note that the three concepts I’ve demonstrated above can be combined in different ways. Various groups emphasizing one or two of the above aspects over and above the other(s) resulted in a diverse number of heresies which the early church battled as it began to settle in on the creedal definitions of the Trinity. The creeds were merely an official formulation of the doctrine that had existed from the earliest days of the church.

I’m going to deliberately avoid combining the three aspects here and leave that for my next post in this series. I hope to show that the early church made the right choice in how it defined its doctrine of God in the creeds.

Holy cow! It’s late and I should go to bed, but the “Google Blog just announced”:http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/04/birds-eye-view.html that “Google Maps”:http://maps.google.com now has the ability to display satellite images in the same slick interface as it already delivers maps. Now you can have driving directions superimposed over actual images of the streets in your hometown.

In my mind, Google Maps already blew MapQuest out of the water, but this adds a whole new dimension of fun.