- Chad Lawrence Nielsen on Is “Godhead Incarnate” False Doctrine? Reclaiming John Rutter’s Candlelight Carol for LDS Theology: “I think there’s room for interpretation on that one, Jonathan. From my perspective, we believe in and potentially worship three gods, not one, so by definition, we’re trithistic, not monotheistic. As Joseph Smith put it, “I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and that the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods. If this is in accordance with the New Testament, lo and behold! we have three Gods anyhow, and they are plural: and who can contradict it!” While I think the statement that he always declared that might be a stretch, it’s a pretty clear rejection of monotheism. But I do know there are ways within our religion to square that circle and make room for that belief. One reason I personally lean towards the position REC911 is articulating is that it is a way to maintain a form of monotheism by saying that God the Father is the one God we follow and worship. And there’s always the thought that the Godhead as a council is a unit, and that unit is our One God (though I personally feel like that one starts getting into the same “have your cake and eat it too” territory as Trinitarianism).” Dec 8, 22:21
- on Is “Godhead Incarnate” False Doctrine? Reclaiming John Rutter’s Candlelight Carol for LDS Theology: “I’d just add that we haven’t rejected monotheism, and there are undesirable downstream consequences for doing so – we just square that particular circle a bit differently than other people. Just like there are various takes on the role of grace in salvation, and we shouldn’t adopt the most extreme one, because we still think agency and obedience and ordinances are important.” Dec 8, 20:23
- on Is “Godhead Incarnate” False Doctrine? Reclaiming John Rutter’s Candlelight Carol for LDS Theology: “What does it mean to worship the Father in the name of the Son? Doesn’t it mean to worship the Father in the name and through the person of the Son? It cannot mean to worship the Father while sidelining or excluding the Son. Anyway, I prefer a Jesus focus far more than a heavenly parents focus. After all, it’s the Church of Jesus Christ — not the Church of Heavenly Father and certainly not the Church of Heavenly Parents. And the totality of the Scripture does indeed point to Jesus as our God.” Dec 8, 19:46
- on Is “Godhead Incarnate” False Doctrine? Reclaiming John Rutter’s Candlelight Carol for LDS Theology: “It seems to me that we’re gradually emerging (a multi-decade process) from a period where we felt a strong need to clearly distinguish ourselves from mainstream Christianity, to the point of exaggerating our differences. This seems to fall in that category. As another example, I remember “When I Survey the Wonderous Cross” being introduced in general conference as “Love So Amazing” to avoid referencing the cross. Many members still hesitate to say we are saved by grace, even though we clearly are. I firmly believe in our theology that God the Father and Jesus Christ are separate beings. But our scriptures frequently use ambiguous language that seems to blur the distinction between them, and there’s no point in trying to be more “Mormon” than the Book of Mormon. On the other hand, on the question of whether we should worship Jesus as well as the Father the scriptures are unambiguous. In addition to the example in 3rd Nephi of the people worshiping and even praying to Jesus (though the latter is seemingly an exception based on special circumstances), I’ll point out 2 Neph 25:29: And now behold, I say unto you that the right way is to believe in Christ, and deny him not; and Christ is the Holy One of Israel; wherefore ye must bow down before him, and worship him with all your might, mind, and strength, and your whole soul; and if ye do this ye shall in nowise be cast out. That said, if I recall correctly the copies of Candlelight Carol in our music library have the same edit, I’ve used it before, and I probably would again. It’s not worth creating an obstacle for someone’s ability to feel the Spirit during the performance. (Assuming I were convinced to sing Candlelight Carol again–too many of the lyrics are just fluff for me. “How do you capture the wind on the water?” indeed.)” Dec 8, 16:07
- on Is “Godhead Incarnate” False Doctrine? Reclaiming John Rutter’s Candlelight Carol for LDS Theology: “Chad, Thanks for the thoughtful info but I should have been more clear….I meant just the LDS shift from God and Jesus are clearly “separate”, first vision stuff, to your “Church leaders seem pretty committed to treating Jesus as God” comment. I am not saying we are calling them “one” like the creeds but it appears we are worshipping/focusing on JUST Jesus and God is now taking a secondary/lessor roll in LDS worship. At least that is how I feel every time I attend church. Anyone else experiencing this? I have never in my life felt it was appropriate to worship any deity except God. I acknowledge that Nelson was focused on Jesus the last few years, but that could be just a by-product of his mormon word hang-up. Perhaps the by-product of the Jesus focus is worshiping Jesus? Faith in Jesus, worship only God kind of mantra is what I have always practiced/believed.” Dec 8, 13:18
- on Is “Godhead Incarnate” False Doctrine? Reclaiming John Rutter’s Candlelight Carol for LDS Theology: “I found the style guide: 8.28 Capitalize second- and third-person pronouns referring to Deity, as well as intensive and reflexive pronouns: *Jesus and His disciples *When God created the earth, He did not create it out of nothing. *We thank Thee, dear Father, for Thy love. *We can show our love for Heavenly Father and Jesus by speaking Their names with reverence. *The Son of God Himself bore the weight of the sins of all humankind. *The Holy Ghost is known as the Comforter, and He can calm our fears and fill us with hope. As an exception, lowercase pronouns referring to heavenly parents. Looking at previous editions, the 2009 one is similar. I can’t find the 1996 version or earlier to see if they have anything.” Dec 8, 12:03
- on Is “Godhead Incarnate” False Doctrine? Reclaiming John Rutter’s Candlelight Carol for LDS Theology: “(Also, I’m happy with this thread jack, so thanks for bringing it up)” Dec 8, 11:07
- on Is “Godhead Incarnate” False Doctrine? Reclaiming John Rutter’s Candlelight Carol for LDS Theology: “REC911, pretty much any substantial discussion of Jesus and godhood gets pretty confusing when people try to dig into it, but it’s an ongoing tension in Christianity. In the early Christian Chuch, they were culturally conditioned to see the divine and the material world as so completely different that they could not truly be united. I’ve heard the comparison before that to them, talking about Jesus being both divine and human was like asking for hot ice cream – by nature, ice cream is frozen, so it can’t be hot. This came up in the debates that led to the major creeds and definitions associated with Nicea and Chalcedon. (Jason Combs did an excellent interview at From the Desk a few years ago on the topic: https://www.fromthedesk.org/divine-nature-of-god-ancient-christians-jason-combs/.) The major debate leading to the Nicene Creed was between two opposing views. Arianism embraced the idea that Jesus was created by God, came after God the Father in both time and substance, and was thus subordinate to the Father. Athanasius of Alexandria led a trinitarian faction, which argued that Christ was coeternal and consubstantial with God the Father. The Nicene Creed rejected Arianism (complete with the wonderful Christmas story of Saint Nicholas slapping Arius in the face during a heated argument over the issue), which has led most Christians since then to formally teach that Jesus is God. (These debates have come up more recently again in Evangelical circles when some preachers put Jesus in a subordinate position to the Father as an example to reinforce patriarchy, leading to accusations of Arianism.) Trinitarianism was, at its core, an attempt by Christians to hold two contradictory perspectives – that they were monotheistic, but that their experiences, as recorded in the New Testament, indicated that there were three different Divinities that they were interacting with. While Latter-day Saints rejected monotheism in the sense that we believe in a tritheistic Godhead, we’ve still inherited a lot of the linguistic and theological baggage associated with the idea. Joseph Smith wasn’t particularly careful in his language about it until late in life, so the revelations that we have through him (both the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants) frequently equate Jesus with God, as some of the other commentators have noted. Now, we have different underlying assumptions that make it so, even when we say the same things as Christians, they often have different meanings in our theological matrix. We don’t necessarily believe that God is an uncreated creator and the point of origin for all that has been created. Joseph Smith’s King Follett Sermon and other related teachings indicated that all humans (including Jesus) are coeternal with God, but that God was more advanced and took us under his wing to teach us how to become like Him. This also means that we don’t see divinity as ontologically distinct from humanity. It’s a difference of degree instead of kind. Within that perspective, along with the hierarchical structure of the Church, Bruce McConkie’s perspective makes sense. Jesus was among the intelligences or spirits that God agreed to tutor and raise as His children, and is therefore subordinate to Him. Jeffrey R. Holland’s 2003 talk, “The Grandeur of God” (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2003/10/the-grandeur-of-god?lang=eng) is a great example of this type of theology being expressed (and I tend to personally think of things more along these lines). The fact that we are instructed to pray to Heavenly Father rather than to Jesus (or our Heavenly Mother) is an expression of this theology as well. In recent years, however, it’s been subtle, but there has been a shift, and it’s become very normative in the Church to refer to Jesus as God and as an object of worship. The example where I first picked up on it is the standards by which hymns are being judged for the new hymnbook, which includes that they have to “Increase faith in and worship of Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.” I feel like there was something in the Church’s style guide about capitalization of pronouns for Jesus, that has become more prominent in Church publications and general conference in the last couple years, but I’m having trouble finding the full style guide at the moment. I’m not sure of the exact reasons for this, however. My guess is that there are two main contributing factors here – first is the language of the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants, discussed above. Second, Jesus is more vivid and real in religious imagination, so it is easier to make him an object of worship. (I.e., Jesus lived a mortal life that we have records of and can tell stories about and paint artistic renderings of, while God is a distant being that Church leaders like Joseph Fielding Smith and James E. Talmage taught only interacts with us through Jesus by divine investiture.)” Dec 8, 11:07
- on Is “Godhead Incarnate” False Doctrine? Reclaiming John Rutter’s Candlelight Carol for LDS Theology: “As a note, because I want this post to be a resource for when situations like the one that Stephen Hardy mentioned arise, I’ve updated to include a section that states what Spencer Greenhalgh pointed out. (Also, Stephen, it’s good to know that this is an issue that goes beyond the Book of Mormon belt geographically – I’m never sure what’s a Utah-ism vs. a broader meme in Latter-day Saint experience.) Sute, I love your question, “Curious, if you could also describe your own child as “Godhead incarnate”?” You’re right, though, that in a sense, you could. I think the key difference with Jesus, though, is that he was already part of the Godhead before he was born.” Dec 8, 11:05
- on CFM 12/15-12/21(The Family): Poetry for “The Family Is Central to the Creator’s Plan”: “I appreciate your sharing of poetry from the rich tapestry of Mormon thought. There is a lot there for fruitful pondering. Regarding the idea of heavenly mothers, I am reminded of the statement attributed to Elder David B. Haight that we have a song, but we don’t have a doctrine. Although I acknowledge that the idea of plural heavenly mothers has a long thread in the rich tapestry of Mormon thought, I don’t see it as necessary or as doctrine; rather, I see it as part of our folklore. I also believe that Jesus lived to teach and save individuals, with hopes of course that individuals would teach and save families. I see the ordinances that bind families as a gift from God, operative in the church as emblematic for the blessing that he intends to provide to all the individuals that accept salvation. After all, God is not a respecter of persons, and he intends to forgive essentially all individuals of all sins, and he is making wonderful things known in these latter days. I am mindful and rejoice that God can bring fruit from a dried stump. I am fearful of a focus on heavenly parents as looking beyond the mark and/or as teachings for itching ears. As a Latter-day Saint, I am satisfied to look to Jesus as our Redeemer, our Savior, and our God. It might be only me, but absent revelation and instructions from our God, I cannot join other Latter-day Saints in looking further.” Dec 8, 09:39
