2 Nephi 31:21


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21 And now, behold, my beloved brethren, this is the way; and there is none other way nor name given under heaven whereby man can be saved in the kingdom of God. And now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end. Amen.

Quotes for Discussion

The “doctrine of Christ” is the plan and system whereby the children of God “fulfill all righteousness” through taking upon themselves the name of Christ in baptism, receiving and obeying the principles and ordinances of the gospel, and then enduring to the end in faith. Paul stated it as “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5), while apostate Christianity would have it as “Many Lords, many faiths, and many (or no) baptisms.”

Millet & McConkie, BOM Commentary, Vol. 1 p. 368

“One God”

In the exalted family of the Gods, the Father and the Son are one. They have the same character, perfections, and attributes. They think the same thoughts, speak the same words, perform the same acts, have the same desires, and do the same works. They possess the same power, have the same mind, know the same truths, live in the same light and glory. To know one is to know the other; to see one is to see the other; to hear the voice of one is to hear the voice of the other. Their unity is perfect. The Son is in the express image of his Father’s person; each has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.

Bruce R. McConkie, Promised Messiah, 9

In other ways, the Son literally is the Father.

[First] The Savior becomes our Father, in the sense in which…he offers us life, eternal life, through the atonement….

[second] We become the children, sons and daughters of Jesus Christ, through our covenants of obedience to him [see Mosiah 5:7]….

[Third] Christ is also our Father because his Father has given him of his fullness; that is, he has received a fullness of the glory of the Father [see D&C 93:1-5, 16-17]….

[Therefore] the Father has honored Christ by placing his name upon him, so that he can minister in and through that name as though he were the Father….

[Fourth] Our Lord is also called the Father in the sense that he is the Father or Creator of the heavens and the earth and all things.

Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 1:29-30

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  • 7 years later...

I'm confused. I thought one of the defining characteristics of Mormonism is that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three beings united in one purpose instead of the mainstream Christian theology of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost all one being with unique purposes). That Book of Mormon passage sounds more like a Triune God. Can you or somebody else please clear this up? I'm not sure what the purpose/objective of your post is either. 

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1 hour ago, CuriousStudent101 said:

I'm confused. I thought one of the defining characteristics of Mormonism is that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three beings united in one purpose instead of the mainstream Christian theology of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost all one being with unique purposes). That Book of Mormon passage sounds more like a Triune God. Can you or somebody else please clear this up? I'm not sure what the purpose/objective of your post is either. 

Welcome!

Mormonism would agree that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost have somewhat different roles.  The part of trinitarianism that Mormonism rejects, as you say, is the notion that Father Son and Holy Ghost are merely different manifestations of the very same substance and/or a single, shared, collective consciousness—Mormonism teaches that each member of the Godhead is of distinct substance with its own identity, working together in such perfect divine harmony that from a literary and functional standpoint they can accurately be described as “one God”.  I don’t see 2 Ne 31:21 conflicting with this paradigm.

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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I wonder why there is only one way. If I had a destination that I wanted as many people as possible to get to, I would do all I could to create multiple pathways to get to that destination and to clear out of the path any and all obstacles. I suspect it is within the ability of God to have done this but He has not (that we know of). Instead, He has made the path strait and narrow, and there will only be few that find it. Presumably there is a reason why He has done this and this leads me to wonder whether there was anything inhibiting or restricting the Lord's path making capability when He was setting up the Plan of Salvation or whether there was any over-riding design requirement that needed to be satisfied. What determines the width of the path. Why is it X instead of Y? 

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  • 5 years later...

So... just asked to read this chapter by some LDS missionaries. Very nice guys. But, your explanation doesn't make sense. My wife and I, when we are of single-minded purpose, are still not described as, 'One Human', either literarily or functionally. That would be very confusing. If you add the sense of "like One God" to the verse, you are changing its meaning.

I should add, this verse reads rather close to the "gloria patri"... really seems as though it was inspired by the gloria patri, which is a very, very trinitarian doxology. Could you point me to a text within the BoM which clearly teaches a non-triune godhead? I will ask the missionaries the same thing when we meet next. Thanks in advance for your help.

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14 hours ago, EZD said:

So... just asked to read this chapter by some LDS missionaries. Very nice guys. But, your explanation doesn't make sense. My wife and I, when we are of single-minded purpose, are still not described as, 'One Human', either literarily or functionally. That would be very confusing. If you add the sense of "like One God" to the verse, you are changing its meaning.

I should add, this verse reads rather close to the "gloria patri"... really seems as though it was inspired by the gloria patri, which is a very, very trinitarian doxology. Could you point me to a text within the BoM which clearly teaches a non-triune godhead? I will ask the missionaries the same thing when we meet next. Thanks in advance for your help.

This is the danger of retconning twenty-first century western mindsets and (translated) linguistic patterns, into centuries- or millennia-old documents created by wholly separate cultures.

OT passages stressing the unity of God, are made in the context of the people of God being a minority in the midst of pagan cultures that were more politically powerful, economically prosperous, culturally pervasive, and technologically advanced than the monotheistic Hebrew rubes; and who attributed their material success to their devotion to a chaotic pantheon of competing and sometimes-warring gods.  The BoM authors were the product of that mentality, and there are textual clues that paganism continued to be an issue in the broader cultures that surrounded the Nephite nation.

I would venture to guess that if you had to spend all day, every day combating rumors that your marriage was in the rocks, you would reply in ever-escalating rhetoric about how you and your wife were in perfect harmony and unity.  You might even describe yourselves as being “of one mind” (even though you (presumably!) don’t actually have a Borg-like shared consciousness) or of “one heart” (even though the two of you do not, as a matter of anatomy, share a single heart or even a combined circulatory system).  So it was throughout Biblical times.  Early Christians, as you probably know, struggled with how to maintain the by-then “respectability” and order of Jewish monotheism, while reconciling that with an apparent plurality of gods suggested by veneration of a god who was the son of the Jewish god (and this nebulous thing called the “Holy Spirit” being thrown in for good measure, adding to the chaos).  After a couple of centuries the debate was ended by imperial fiat through the development of a couple of creeds that basically said “Three.  But one.  And three.  And one.  And yet not three.  But three.  And yet not one.  But one.  Mystery, and tiny human brains, and blah, blah, blah”; with physical violence and torture (or the threat thereof) deployed against those who asked too many questions. 

I don’t think you’ll find a place in the BoM that explicitly comes out and rejects trinitarianism.  The BoM continues to speak of the unity of God, though it also (like the Bible) has instances where the Son and the Father (or Holy Ghost) are seen as distinct entities.  Joseph Smith’s 1838 account of his 1820 “first vision” clearly depicts (like Stephen’s vision) the Father and the Son standing next to each other—ie, separate corporeal entities—though some of his earlier accounts of that vision suggest he had not initially understood the full theological ramifications of what he had seen.  And the Lectures on Faith (released under Smith’s imprimatur in 1835, though a significant portion of them may have been ghost-written by a former Campbellite preacher) contain a description of the Holy Ghost that was superseded by later teachings of Smith.

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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22 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I would venture to guess that if you had to spend all day, every day combating rumors that your marriage was in the rocks, you would reply in ever-escalating rhetoric about how you and your wife were in perfect harmony and unity.  You might even describe yourselves as being “of one mind” (even though you (presumably!) don’t actually have a Borg-like shared consciousness) or of “one heart” (even though the two of you do not, as a matter of anatomy, share a single heart or even a combined circulatory system).

Or, if you want to use a biblical phrase, “one flesh”. Marriage creates Siamese twins.

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