Evangelicals and the Creeds

Volume Four—Chapter Three EVANGELICALS AND THE CREEDS

#Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity

North American culture is the product of European culture which, in turn, is the product of ancient cultures, largely Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian. From the former, we have inherited most of our intellectual traditions including language, most of our literary and dramatic forms, music, rhetoric, law, science, mathematics, logic, and philosophy. From the latter we inherited our religious and moral traditions. These two cultures began to merge in the first century AD. However, certain factors hindered that fusion. For one thing, the Greek culture was idolatrous and corrupt. Nevertheless, the blending continued for the next few centuries.

This merging played a significant role in the apostasy of Christ’s early church. Actually, several factors were instrumental. Persecution of the saints, immorality among the people of the church, and multiple pagan external influences including Greek philosophy all played important roles. However, the death of the apostles near the end of the first century AD was the one most crucial and fatal factor. Though the apostles, while they were alive, constantly struggled against false doctrines in the church, they provided the necessary inspired continuity vital to the church. Without the apostles there was no divine authority and leadership and no divine revelation. There could be no stability in doctrine without them. The only way the church could have survived was for new apostles to be called. They were not. Thus, with their deaths, the “Christian” church was left unstable and vulnerable to change. The church began to absorb ideas and customs from ambient secular cultures. The uneducated but charismatic apostles and bishops were replaced by scholars. Political and governmental issues entered into the day-to-day workings of the Christian church. Intellectual philosophical theology eventually replaced the simpler theology of the apostolic church.

The early church fathers became concerned over the implications and appropriateness of the consolidation of the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures. At first they were reluctant to condone secular education among Christians. The available learning was of predominantly Greek origin. If the early fathers rejected learning, they would reject important advances of the arts and sciences. On the other hand, to accept it was to accept ideas incompatible with Christianity. Ultimately the path of synthesis of Greek and Christian cultures won out. By the latter part of the first century AD, Greek philosophical thought began to play an increasingly influential role in the church.

Platonism, the philosophy of Plato, had its beginnings in the fourth century BC (Plato lived 424 to 348 BC). Middle Platonism was the version of Platonism that prevailed from about 130 BC to the late second century AD. Neoplatonism, or “modern

Platonism,” was founded by the ancient philosopher Plotinus in the third century AD. Platonism, both middle and modern, became the foundation for understanding God, man, and the world in the first and second centuries AD. It also became the fundamental theory on which Christian theology was grounded. Christianity eventually became thoroughly Platonized.

In Platonism, the algorithm for life and knowledge was based on Platonic forms. Plato argued that all traits such as justice, beauty, goodness, and love theoretically exist in perfect form in an eternal and unchanging world. This is the world of the Platonic forms. Physical reality is but an imperfect or transitory symbol or expression of these ideals. Plato further argued that the forms are somehow even more real than the concrete things we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste every day. He concluded that the physical world is an illusion or dream. The “real” world is that of these eternal forms.

Some Christian leaders such as Augustine (AD 354-430) became thoroughly Platonized. At some point, he clearly detected Platonic metaphysics throughout the New Testament. Metaphysics is that aspect of philosophy concerned with the nature of the world and the nature of reality. Augustine claimed that Platonic forms were located in the mind of God. Evil became the absence of good, a concept not found in scriptures. To Augustine, God existed outside time. God’s nature was to be known primarily through negative theology—through the characteristics he does not, and must not, possess.

#The Evangelicals’ Concept of God

Beginning shortly after the death of Christ and certainly by the beginning of the second century AD, there began to be ambiguity in the minds of Christians as to the true nature of God. By the fourth and fifth centuries, no firm consensus had been established. The scriptures and other particulars of religion were no longer matters to be trusted to the common man. Only educated, sophisticated intellectuals were qualified to understand them. Scholars generally viewed the scriptures figuratively and not literally. Only they could decipher their complex, deeply symbolic meanings. While the uneducated and unsophisticated continued to interpret the scriptures literally, the scholars “knew” the scriptures were not intended to be interpreted that way. The true scriptural meanings were deeper and less obvious. Literal interpretations were, for them, naive, simplistic, and embarrassing.

It was time to settle the important issue of what God was really like. Councils were called. Within a little over a century three major councils were convened with the world’s biblical scholars in attendance. These were the councils of Nicaea (AD 325), Constantinople (AD 381), and Chalcedon (AD 451). They were attended and controlled by scholars with a penchant for Greek philosophic (Platonic) thought. It was clearly the intellectual fashion of the day. Hence, out of these councils emerged a definition of God with an easily identifiable spin or bias. Each council formulated a written formal proclamation defining God. These authoritative declarations are called creeds. The creeds are most pertinent and influential even today. They pertain among current “orthodox” Christians every bit as much as they applied to those who lived in the days of the councils, 1500-1700 years ago.

Plato had particular inclinations as he contemplated the nature of God. His defining bias was that God was infinitely powerful and unlimited in his abilities. God could not possess any characteristics that in any way limited his powers. The Christian scholars of the fourth and fifth centuries were similarly biased. The councils concluded that God must be much as Plato had conceived of him some 700 to 800 years previously. These scholars characterized God as (1) impassible, (2) immaterial, (3) incorporeal, and (4) invisible. The evangelical and LDS views of these characteristics are discussed in the following pages.

#Impassible

Evangelical view. The Greek ideal held that God must be without passions or emotions (the terms apatheia or impassible describe this characteristic). Otherwise, his will would be subject to his emotions and feelings. In the Greek view, God could not be subject to anything. He must not experience suffering, sorrow, anger, or love. If he did, he would be subject to those passions. They would affect him. They would influence him. They would limit him. He must not, indeed could not, be affected, influenced, or limited in any way.

LDS view. The God we perceive in the Bible is hardly impassible. He is a God of love who is also jealous of the other religious preferences of humankind. He is indignant over wickedness. He is longsuffering, forgiving, and kind to the repentant. Jesus, who is “the express image of [the Father’s] person” (Hebrews 1:3), wept at the death of Lazarus and, in righteous anger, cast the money changers out of the temple.

The fact that the scriptures insist on the love of God (“God is love,” “For God so loved the world”) was problematic for those in the early Christian councils. They got around this problem by simply redefining love whenever it was applied to God. For them, divine love was not an emotion. Augustine defined the love of God as a function of his reason and will alone. God feels nothing. Thus, according to the ancient theologians, love as humans know it in an emotive sense has nothing to do with God, the statements of the scriptures notwithstanding. Neither can God have genuine compassion or empathy for human suffering, except as those terms are redefined to eliminate the element of feeling. It is interesting to note that in this way the language of scripture, the bare words themselves, are retained, but their meaning is subverted by philosophical biases.

Robinson writes:

Of course, the greatest passion of all was the suffering of Christ in Gethsemane and on the cross. Thus, the central event and fact of the

Christian gospel was also the biggest obstacle to embracing the Greek ideal of an impassible God, a God who cannot suffer. This obstacle was finally overcome in AD 451 at the Council of Chalcedon. There, the theologians declared that unlike all other entities, which have a single essence or nature, Jesus Christ must have two natures, one human and one divine. It was the human nature that suffered on the cross. The divine nature, the post-mortal Son of God, didn’t feel a thing. The human Jesus may have suffered and died for sinners, but the divine Son of God never did! (Are Mormons Christians?, 85).

Thus, Chalcedon provided a formula by which the theologians could maintain contradictory propositions. God suffered because of his human nature. And he did not suffer because of his divine nature. The formula allowed orthodoxy to affirm, with the New Testament, that Christ suffered while agreeing with Plato that God is impassible and cannot suffer.

Daniel Peterson wondered about the validity of Christ’s atoning sacrifice if the divine Christ did not suffer:

If this were so . . . it would be extremely troubling. Did only Jesus’s human nature suffer on the cross? Was Christ’s divine nature, being nonphysical, immune to the pains of the crucifixion? If so, how could there have been an atonement? How did the physical, human Jesus’s death on the cross differ, fundamentally, from the deaths of the hundreds of others who suffered that cruel method of execution? Are we doomed? (FRB,

313).

Robinson adds:

The theological proposition of the two natures in Christ, an invention of the post-apostolic Church, was so incomprehensible and so controversial that it took two hundred years to finally go down, and even then the Egyptian, Abyssinian, Syrian, and Armenian churches never would swallow it. They believed that this doctrine was a cleverly disguised rejection of the central claim of the New Testament—that God suffered and died for man. Yet orthodoxy was willing to accept the doctrine of the two natures simply because Greek philosophy couldn’t abide the idea of a God that suffers, either emotionally or physically, and the church at that time had more trust in the logic of its scholarly leaders than in the literal language of its scriptures (Are Mormons Christians?, 86).

Augustine and others went to great lengths to insist that all references to emotions in God must be interpreted in a non-emotive sense. For example, Augustine stated: “Now when God is said [in the Bible] to be angry, we do not attribute to him such a disturbed feeling as exists in the mind of an angry man; we merely refer to his just displeasure against sin by the term ‘anger,’ a word transferred by analogy from human emotions” (Augustine, Enchiridion, Cp. 33). So in Augustine’s mind God does not actually feel the emotion of anger. Note that Augustine did use an emotive word, “displeasure,” in describing God’s reaction to man’s sinful nature.

As we might expect, most modern orthodox Christians are unaware of this doctrine at all and naively speak of a God who suffers and loves. Those, however, conversant with the fine points of orthodoxy know that according to the fourth- and fifthcentury creeds, the divine nature within Christ could not and did not suffer for us or anyone else. Nor does he feel emotional love or empathy for us. The Evangelical apologist Henry Chadwick expressed it in this way: “The enthusiasm of devotion may say that ‘God suffered and died’; but the theologian knows that God is impassible and immortal, and therefore that this transfer of human frailty to God . . . does not strictly mean what it says” (The Early Church, 193).

We know today that the Son of God actually became human in his nature and then suffered and died for humankind. The agony of his atoning sacrifice carved into his soul permanent wells of empathy and compassion for all mankind. They qualified him, and only him, among all of the beings in the Father’s universe, to be the Savior of all mankind. Only he could thereby extend mercy with perfect insight, fairness, and compassion to the deserving. He could not leave this empathy behind when he died and was resurrected. That same empathy had to be contained in his divine nature, and it was. Christ himself—all of him—suffered in Gethsemane and on the cross. He continues to be our Savior today, even after he has shed his “human nature.” His atoning experience instilled in him the judgment to give freely his mercy when it is deserved or to limit or withhold it when appropriate.

The Son of God, on concluding his atoning ordeal, was importantly different. As he entered the Garden, he had not completely qualified himself to be our Savior. His experience there was no ritual and dispassionate exercise. For him it was an agonizing and nearly overwhelming ordeal. Thereby the process was completed. Today, he continues to view with real empathy and concern the plight of his myriad brothers and sisters. The perfect empathy he so agonizingly acquired during his atoning suffering continues fully functional today. It blesses his life and ours in fundamental and crucial ways. He continues to dispense his love and mercy to those who seek earnestly to follow him. Are we to believe that his resurrection returned him to an impassible state? Does he now regard and judge mankind merely dispassionately, objectively, and logically? Certainly not. He loves us. He yearns to live with us forever. And we respond by yearning one day to return to his loving arms.

#Immaterial, Incorporeal, Invisible

Evangelical view. A key issue separating Protestants and Latter-day Saints is whether or not God has a tangible body. Evangelicals’ believe that God’s essential nature is spiritual, immaterial, and invisible. They feel that “embodiment implies notions of spatiality and limitation inappropriate to the divine essence” (Owen and Mosser in FRB, 36).

Blomberg raises the following in defense of his position that God does not have a material body:

1. Evangelicals maintain that the omnipresence of the Father is hard to square with his having a body. The psalmist asks, “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” (Psalm 139:7). “How can God be everywhere present,” they ask, “and in a body at the same time?” They also use 1 Kings 8:27: “Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?” If God were to have a body, the scholars reasoned, he could only be in one place at one time. This is not acceptable to them. He must not be confined and limited. Hence, God must consist of some ethereal substance that can literally fill the universe. They call this substance “spirit.” Never mind that they have no idea what spirit is. It fills the bill.

John 4:24 reads: “God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” This verse suggests that God is essentially a spiritual being (HWD, 97).

2. Evangelicals admit that the Bible (New and Old Testaments) indicates, in several places, that God the Father has a body. They acknowledge the numerous texts in the Bible that ascribe bodily parts to God. They attribute these to an immaterial God who is able to appear in visions, in anthropomorphic form, as needed.

They also acknowledge the New Testament suggestion that once resurrected Jesus would never again lay down his resurrected body (Romans 6:9). But surely (according to Platonic thought), it would be naive to take those biblical passages at face value. Surely those writings are only figurative and symbolic. How could God, after all, actually have a body? They utilize the “two-nature” theory of Christian orthodoxy to explain Romans 6:9. Blomberg writes: “As one who is all-powerful, God can make himself heard through audible voices and can make himself seen through temporary visions, as occurs periodically throughout the Scriptures, without demonstrating that by nature God has a body” (HWD, 98). Evangelicals see this as God’s technique of fixing man’s attention while he speaks to them.

3. They do acknowledge Genesis 1:26-27 which indicates that “God created man in his own image.” However, they ask, what is image? Does this really imply that God has a material body? With reference to Genesis 1:26-27, Blomberg suggests a few alternatives to the idea that God has a bodily form. These include man’s exercise of dominion over creation, his moral nature, and his participation in God’s communicable attributes (HWD, 99-100).

Evangelicals reason: if God is to be everywhere present at all times, he must not be detectable by his subjects. He must be able to be present without being detected. It wouldn’t do to have people looking at God all the time. Hence, he must be invisible.

LDS view of “immaterial.” We affirm that “the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us” (D&C 130:22). We acknowledge that this restored doctrine is not entirely clear in the Bible, though many biblical passages are compatible with this great truth.

I paraphrase Brother Robinson’s comments on John 4:24: Actually John 4:24 should be translated “God is Spirit” (emphasis added) rather than “God is a Spirit” (emphasis added), for there is no indefinite article (a, an) in the Greek language, and it is always a matter of subjective judgment as to when the translator should add one. The consensus among biblical scholars is that there should not be an indefinite article at John 4:24. The Latter-day Saints do not dispute John 4:24 at all, unless it is interpreted as limiting God to being merely spirit. . . . Two of the most fundamental teachings of the New Testament are that Christ is genuinely God and that he is a physically resurrected being. Having been resurrected, he will never lay that body down (Romans 6:9). John 4:24 is not an essential definition of God, but a description of one of God’s characteristics. It means that God is “Spirit” for mankind because he brings the Spirit, he communicates with them in the Spirit. He is a spiritual being. There are two other such descriptions in John’s writings: “God is light” (1 John 1:5), and “God is love” (1 John 4: 8). Paul wrote that “God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). Just as God is not limited to being light and nothing else by 1 John 1:5, or to being love and nothing else by 1 John 4:8, or a consuming fire and nothing else by Hebrews 12:29, so he is not limited to being spirit and nothing else by John 4:24 (Are Mormons Christians?, 79-80).

Daniel Peterson adds:

God is spiritual in his essential nature, say Owen and Mosser. And this, they suggest, militates against the teaching of the Latter-day Saints (FRB, 32-33). But Latter-day Saints need not contest this point. For every human being, too, is spiritual in his or her essential nature. For most Christians, humans are not exhaustively defined by their bodies. I am not my body; I have a body. The “I” of Daniel Peterson seems to be distinguishable from the body that bears that name. My body, I am told, does not even exist continuously over its mortal life span. Its cells are entirely replaced over several multiyear cycles. But the identity of “Daniel Peterson” continues—for good or for ill—until my body can no longer renew itself. And even then it does not cease (FRB, 311).

Another point is worth considering. The Greek word translated in John 4:24 as “spirit,” pneuma, is most naturally read as indicating a material substance. It implies the form of a body. In fact, Origen, one of the great advocates of the immaterialism of God, railed against John 4:24 since he saw it as a possible proof text for those who believed God had a body (see part 2 of David L. Paulsen, “The Doctrine of Divine Embodiment: Restoration, Judeo-Christian, and Philosophical Perspectives,” BYU Studies, 6-94). If pneuma clearly referred to an immaterial substance, then Origen’s response would be superfluous. The more natural reading of John 4:24 in the Greek, at least in the era of the church fathers, would have implied that God is embodied.

There is yet another sense in which the Father is a personage of spirit—he has a “spiritual body.” The scriptures provide us with the revealed definition of a spiritual body. It is a resurrected body of flesh and bones. 1 Corinthians 15:44 speaks of the resurrection and explains: “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body [the mortal body], and there is a spiritual body [the resurrected body]” (italics added). Also D&C 88:27 speaks of the righteous who will inherit the celestial kingdom. It says: “For notwithstanding they die, they also shall rise again, a spiritual body [a resurrected body].”

Evangelicals assume that if God were to possess a material physical body, this would make divine omnipresence impossible. Such a God would be “limited” by that body. God, in the LDS view, is not physically present in all things but rather spiritually present. By his pervasive light, his power, and influence God is “in all things and through all things” (D&C 88:6) and “giveth life to all things” (D&C 88:13). Is this so different from the Evangelical view in which God’s omnipresence is likewise a spiritual presence? In our view the “light” or spiritual power of Christ the Creator fills the immensity of space and permeates all things (D&C 88:11-14). “It is his power and influence that holds all creation in place atom by atom and moment to moment” (HWD,

77). God has a body, but his body does not limit him. We also would agree with 1 Kings 8:27 that God cannot be contained by an earthly temple or by heaven and earth themselves.

LDS view of “incorporeal.” Christ died on the cross and his spirit separated from his body. In his resurrection his spirit reunited with his body. We have already mentioned Romans 6:9. Paul teaches there that Christ will not die again: “Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.” Christ will never again lay down his body. He lives today with his body. Consider also the following:

1. Hebrews 5:8-9 suggests that after his suffering and crucifixion, Christ was perfect: “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.” And what was the form of that perfection? He had a body of flesh and bones.

2. After his resurrection, Jesus ministered to his apostles and assured them that he was not merely a spirit: “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39).

3. In Acts 1:9-11 Christ’s disciples learn that Christ will return again in the same form and in the same manner as he ascended into heaven following his resurrection: “And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” He will return with his eternal celestial body. He has had this body since his resurrection, and he will always possess it.

4. Philippians 3:20-21: “For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.” This change in our bodies, of course, will result from the resurrection. Then, there will be for all of us, as there was for Jesus Christ, an indissoluble union of spirit and body. The body blends with spirit, and both become one, spiritual, inseparable, and perfect!

5. Let us return to Genesis 1:26-27. It reads: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” We believe that humankind is created in the image of God. We take this quite literally. God has a physical image and humanity is created in it. By definition, an image is the representation of physical qualities. Adam was created in the likeness and image of God. After the fall, Adam begat Seth “in his own likeness, after his image” (Genesis 5:3). The language of orthodox Christians in making the “image” in which Adam was created a nonphysical image, a spiritual image, necessitates taking the word image figuratively and not literally.

6. Hebrews 1:2-3 refers to the Father and compares him to the Son: “Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” The Father also has a physical body. Jesus’s mortal and resurrected bodies is were and are in the “express image” of the Father’s body.

7. John 14:8-9: “Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?” Jesus teaches Philip that the Father has a material body, in the “image” of the Son.

What of the visions of God, well known to the entire religious world? Was he not seen? Did he not speak to Moses and Steven? Catholics and Evangelical Protestants have sorted this out. As previously mentioned, they have concluded that

God can make himself heard through audible voices. He can make himself seen as an anthropomorphic being through temporary visions, as occurs periodically throughout the scriptures. These temporary transformations do not demonstrate that by nature he has a body. Evangelicals hold the biblical language about God’s hand, finger, face, or back to be merely “anthropomorphisms” or figures of speech, never intended to be taken literally. Paulsen and Potter write: “It seems to us that it is just as consistent with the anthropomorphic language of the Bible to claim that God is embodied in a body of flesh and bones. Indeed, a more natural and literal reading of the Bible leads us to the conclusion that God is embodied in this way. However, we admit that it is the further revelation from the LDS canon that assures us that this is the case” (FRB, 241-42).

Evangelicals actually seem less concerned with God’s biblical theophanies in which he presents with an anthropomorphic body than they are with the LDS doctrine that God is a glorified human being, an exalted man with a body of flesh and bones. Owen and Mosser seem almost resigned to the idea that God may have a body. They write, “If it were granted that God the Father does have some sort of form or body as such texts as Ezekiel 1:26-28 and Daniel 7:9 might seem to indicate, what kind of body would it be?” (FRB, 33). They write of the LDS’s view of God:

The real point of contention is not the idea of God’s having a theophanic form per se, but the idea that God has a body analogous to our own. Christians should have no problem describing God in anthropomorphic terms, but reducing God to the level of a glorified human being creates huge problems. Contrary to what some Latter-day Saints may think, it is not beyond orthodoxy to take the language of Ezekiel 1 [“upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man”] and Daniel 7 [“I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him”] seriously while continuing to maintain the orthodox concept of God (FRB, 34-35).

LDS view of “invisible.” Regarding God’s “invisibility” Evangelicals would point to 1 Timothy 1:17 which seems to refer to the Father: “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever.” The word for “invisible” here in the Greek is aoratos. The Greek word horatos means “seen.” Its negation, aoratos, as in 1 Timothy 1:17, means “unseen” or “not seen.” Here, however, it is translated as “unseeable” or “invisible.” There is an obvious difference between “unseen” and “invisible.” Is the Father “unseeable”? Or is he simply “unseen”? Regarding whether or not it is possible to see God the Father under any circumstances, the term aoratos is ambiguous.

We believe that before the incarnation of Jesus, during the Old Testament period, the God described in scripture as Jehovah or Yahweh was God the Son (Jesus Christ). At that time, he was still a spirit who had not yet entered into the flesh. Jesus was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (1 Nephi 19:10). In the Bible, the Father is represented in most things by his Son, the Word of God, acting as his agent or mediator in creation, in revealing his will to humans and in the work of redemption. It was the Father of Jesus Christ who remained “unseen” (Greek aoratos) and largely unknown before the atonement of Christ restored human access to him.

Evangelicals sometimes point to scriptures like John 1:18: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” Also 1 John 4:12: “No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.” We would confirm that no “mere human being has ever seen or can see” God. Robinson observes, “To see God would incinerate mere mortals” (HWD, 79). If a man is to brook the direct presence of God, he must be transfigured to protect him against God’s potentially destructive glory or light, as were Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Transfiguration: “And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light” (Matthew 17:1-2). This teaching is confirmed by modern revelation: “For no man has seen God at any time in the flesh, except quickened by the Spirit of God” (D&C 67:11). “And he saw God face to face, and he talked with him, and the glory of God was upon Moses; therefore Moses could endure his presence” (Moses 1:2). Robinson continues:

Certain scriptures which the LDS take literally, but Evangelicals do not, confirm that “mere” human beings can be lifted by God above their “merely” human condition and then see God spiritually, as did Jacob (Genesis 32:30), Moses (Deuteronomy 5:4; 34:10), Nadab, Abihu, the elders of Israel (Exodus 24:9-11), and Isaiah (Isaiah 6:1, 5). Jesus promises that humans who are not “merely human” but “pure in heart” will see God (Matthew 5:8), as does Paul (1 Corinthians 13:12), so it can hardly be credible to deny the explicit promise of Christ and say that no human ever can see God (HWD, 79).2

Evangelicals contend that God can make himself visible. But, they add, this fact should not be taken to mean that he is actually corporeal by nature. Daniel Peterson writes:

Well. On page 22 Owen and Mosser criticize Robinson for what they say is an ad hoc position on the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. They even voice the suspicion that Robinson might be motivated by a desire to avoid evidence that seems to contradict his beliefs. But this notion of a God who alternately takes on a physical appearance and then sheds it strikes me, and has always struck me, as rather desperately ad hoc. Contrived. Jerry-built. There seems to be no biblical support for it, but a great deal of biblical data that it seeks to outmaneuver. Worse still, it seems to involve God in deception, or at least to implicate him as misleading (FRB, 311-12).

#Do the LDS contradict the Bible?

There is no question that Latter-day Saints accept through modern revelation some propositions about God not thoroughly described in the Bible. Accordingly, Evangelicals often conclude incorrectly either (1) that Mormons reject the biblical information or (2) that the Mormon view, by being different in some respects, must therefore necessarily contradict the Bible. We contend, by virtue our access to modern revelation, we are able to add to the Bible account, but those additions in no way contradict what is already in the Bible. We can confidently invite anyone who disagrees to show any contradiction. We freely admit that our additions do contradict the doctrine of the early councils and creeds, but these creeds are not scripture.

Robinson writes, “Some Christians believe that Jesus will return soon, perhaps even in this generation. Others believe that dancing is immoral, or that computerscanned bar codes are the mark of the Beast. These are not stated in the Bible. They may or may not be correct. Believing them, however, does not necessarily contradict the Bible” (HWD, 132).

Daniel Peterson writes further of the concept of scriptural contradiction:

Contradiction, it seems to me, is often in the eye of the beholder. Wouldn’t Jews see the New Testament as contradicting the Old? What about circumcision, for example? When the Lord instituted circumcision with Abraham—the practice predates Moses and the Mosaic law by many generations—there was no hint that it was only a temporary measure. Quite the contrary. All male children in Abraham’s line were to be circumcised “in their generations.” “My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant” (Genesis 17:9, 13-14). Under the Mosiac law, even resident aliens among the Israelites had to receive circumcision if they wished to participate in the Passover (see Exodus 12:48-49). The seriousness with which the Lord took the rite is reflected in such passages as Joshua 5:2-8.

On the other hand, when Jews heard Paul say things like, “in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision” (Galatians 5:6), or “He is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter” (Romans 2:29), they could certainly be pardoned for concluding that this “modern revelation” of Paul’s contradicted “previous, biblical revelation” (FRB, 317).

#Importance of the Creeds in the Formulation of Doctrine

Evangelical view. Ultimately Evangelicals lean, for their doctrine of the Trinity (see chapter 3, Trinity Doctrine), “on historic Christian beliefs.” These beliefs sprang from the early councils and creeds. In attempting to distance themselves from the philosophic influences in the doctrines of orthodox Christianity, they claim that trinitarian thought initially had nothing whatever to do with the philosophical arguments of the councils. In other words, they insist that the scholars of the councils saw the Trinity doctrine in the Bible. Owen and Mosser write, “The starting point of the trinitarian view is not Hellenistic philosophy, but rather God’s revelation of himself as fundamentally ‘one’ (Deuteronomy 6:4)” (FRB, 46).

Blomberg writes:

Few Evangelicals claim that everything in the historic creeds of the early church is demonstrably biblical in derivation. Ultimately we do not base our beliefs on Chalcedon, Nicaea, or even the Apostles’ Creed, but on the Old and New Testaments. We do usually claim that the heart of these creeds’ affirmations about God, Christ, and the Spirit can be supported biblically and that other statements are the logical corollaries of the Bible’s teachings” (HWD, 118).

Owen and Mosser write:

The creeds of the church are not the product of pagan Hellenistic philosophy, as Robinson repeatedly asserts and intimates. Rather, these creeds are the fruit of the collective efforts of the early Christians’ attempts to grapple with and properly understand the fresh revelation of God found in the New Testament. On the one hand Christianity began with the monotheism inherited from Judaism and struggled to incorporate into it the full experience of God manifest in Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand Christians sought to defend this revelation against the incessant attacks and ridicule of the Greeks. This twofold struggle caused the early Christians to develop new intellectual frameworks and to modify existing categories, both Greek and Hebrew, in an attempt to present the fulness of the gospel in all its purity and power. It was not a matter of trying to appear wise according to the world’s standards (see 1 Corinthians 1:18-31); God’s honor was at stake (compare 1 Samuel 17:26).

Is it in fact the case that in the midst of this struggle, the earliest Christian understanding of God was lost and replaced by unbiblical Hellenistic thought forms? What are we to make of the Nicene Creed and its use of philosophical terminology such as ousia [essence or being], homoousios [of one substance], and hypostasis [substance]? Should we take the Nicene Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon as “well-

intentioned attempts to make sense of the biblical data in ways that frequently turn out to be right,” as Blomberg advises (HWD, 113)? Or is Robinson closer to the mark when he asserts that “those creeds imposed nonbiblical concepts on the biblical data, and they used nonbiblical terms—trinity, homoousios, consubstantial, ungenerated, indivisible, and so forth—in doing it” (HWD, 130)?

It seems to us that Robinson jumps too quickly from the obvious use of nonbiblical terms (which can readily be granted) to the assumption of nonbiblical concepts (which needs to be proved, not asserted). When considering the use of theological terminology, one must keep in mind that the Nicene Creed was birthed in the midst of controversy, and its framers did not necessarily have the luxury of choosing the terms of the debate, which were largely the predetermined by the recent outbreak of what was an extremely persuasive adaptation of Christian theology to the thought forms of Greek philosophy (FRB, 57-58).

Evangelicals generally, and quite steadfastly, maintain that the councils were simply the efforts of honest diligent Christians to better define and understand spiritual truths in the Bible. They claim Greek philosophy had little effect on the conclusions of the councils.

LDS view. While ostensibly intended to defend the Evangelicals’ view of the Creeds, these quotes of Blomberg, Owen, and Mosser show evidence of their trying to distance themselves from those councils. The quotes are also self incriminating. They aver that the early Christians needed to compromise and make peace with pagan Hellenists. What might we expect to come out of such a conference of scholars seeking for ecumenism among Christian and non-Christian schools of thought? Would Owen and Mosser deny that these “early Christians” were scholars with in inclination toward Platonistic philosophy? Christ’s simple gospel was intended by the Master himself to be understood by the least sophisticated among his people. It is ironic that it was drastically altered by scholars whose deliberations and compromises resulted in complex, sophisticated, nonbiblical, obviously philosophical, concepts. The complexity of the creedal summaries condemns those summaries as being doctrines of men and not of God. Christ said to Nephi, “For my soul delighteth in plainness; for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men. For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding” (2 Nephi 31:3).

Owen and Mosser end their critical review of Blomberg and Robinson’s book with a rather remarkable appendix (FRB, 82-102) intended “to specifically contest Robinson’s position concerning the influence of Hellenism and Greek philosophy on orthodox Christian theology” (HWD, 82). There, the authors conclude that Greek philosophy had little direct affect on the doctrine of God that came out of the councils.

They say Greek (Hellenistic) culture was influential in helping to mold Christianity even from the time of the mortal Savior. In fact they believe the early church fathers viewed the intellectual achievements of the Greeks as laying a ground work of preparation for a more effective spreading of the good news of the Messiah to a pagan world.

Roger D. Cook responded to Owen and Mosser’s appendix. He wrote an insightful analysis of the extent to which Greek culture in fact did influence the church during Christ’s ministry, during the remainder of the first century AD, and beyond into the second century AD. He pointed out that Paul showed real contempt for Greek philosophy (see 1 Corinthians 1:21-23). Cook argued, “The preponderance of evidence shows that the Hellenization of Christian doctrine is relatively minor until the second century [AD]” (FRB, 272).

Cook also provided us with a history of the sequential infiltration of Greek thought into Christianity. From his article, we learn that some aspects of Greek culture were accepted into Christian thought and other aspects were not. He writes:

A radical Hellenization of Christianity began in the middle of the second century, but it should not be understood that with the introduction of Middle Platonic philosophy [Middle Platonism, you will recall, was the version of Platonism which prevailed from about 130 BC to the late second century AD.], Christians did not retain many of their distinct theological roots. Much of early Christianity was redefined to fit a Middle Platonic mold, but not every aspect of Greek philosophy was compatible with Christianity, and as a result some facets of it would have been summarily rejected. For example, Orthodox Christianity could never fully accept the Greek idea that matter was evil and accordingly remained firmly committed to the idea of Christ’s and man’s resurrection. Christians, therefore, continued to believe in a literal resurrection of the body, despite the lingering belief in Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism [Neoplatonism, or “modern Platonism,” was founded in the third century AD.] that one’s duty was to escape from the corrupting influences of the body and exist as an immaterial soul in a quasidivinized state for eternity. Orthodox Christians also continued to believe that God is deeply concerned with mankind, unlike various philosophic schools that emphasized that mankind is beneath God’s notice. If we fail to recognize strong Christian elements that remain firmly entrenched in orthodox thought, we fail to understand the development of orthodox Christianity. The Hellenization of Christianity is extensive, but by no means complete. The Christian fathers [that is, scholar/leaders] found, on the other hand, that many aspects of Middle Platonic philosophy were fully compatible with Christian thought, and they quickly and thoroughly applied them to Christianity (FRB, 274-

75).

Cook points out another Middle Platonic and Neoplatonic “position” never included in the Christian creeds. The Christians held to their belief in ex nihilo creation in spite of a Greek philosophic bias for ex materia creation (FRB, page 274, note 23).

Cook writes that the greatest and most influential intrusion of Greek philosophy actually occurred in the early part of the second century. The philosophy of Middle Platonic philosophers was “borrowed by Christian philosophers, the result being a radical redefinition of the early Christian concept of God” (FRB, 276). “By the middle of the second century,” Cook points out, “a body of Christian apologists began unashamedly to apply Greek metaphysical speculation and allegorical interpretation to Christian doctrine.” These included church leaders like Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus, Tertullian, Clement, and Origen.

Cook describes Plato’s belief in a higher sphere of reality (the world of the “forms”) with its rejection of anthropomorphism and materiality: “This concept of an ultimate and absolute reality, which is outside of human experience and comprehension, became the standard definition of God in Greek philosophy and remains the accepted belief of orthodox Christianity today” (FRB, 278).

Graham and Siebach puzzle over why orthodox Chrisianity continues to hold to these outdated ideas:

The model which informed early Christian theology, namely Neoplatonism, and the one which informed later medieval theology, Aristotelianism, are both long gone from the intellectual landscape, everywhere but in (some schools of) theology. And theological theories come and go in conjunction with almost all intellectual fads. But from the perspective of history, it seems strange to want to hitch one’s wagon to the dead horse of Platonism. And the failure of that experience [the slipping out of favor in today’s philosophic community] should offer the judicious observer fair warning about the prospects of throwing in with any human theory, however sophisticated and fashionable. For, as Isaiah cautions, “the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid” (Isaiah 29:14) (FRB, 219-

20).

After the heyday of Christian inclusion of Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism in the late second and early third centuries, there was a backlash against philosophical speculation. There developed some tension between Greek philosophy and Christian doctrine. The stage was thus set for the debates in the Council at Nicaea in AD 325. We thus see that middle Platonic Greek philosophy was firmly rooted in Christianity long before the debates of Nicaea.

So which is it? In the synthesis of Christ’s religion and Greek thought and culture, do we have a higher embodiment of religious truth? Or, do we have simply corruption of Christ’s teachings and the beginning of a syncretistic (the union of opposing principles and practices) church. Greek culture and philosophy obviously became and still exist as dominant influences in orthodox Christian theology.

#Conclusion

In considering Owen and Mosser’s attempt to justify the creed’s influences on orthodox Christianity, the Latin phrase res ipsi loquitur (“the thing speaks for itself”) comes to mind. “The thing,” in this case, is the concept of God and the Godhead that emerged from those scholarly councils. It is a concept that condemns itself regardless of the make up and agenda of those councils and regardless of the biases and intentions of the participants. What emerged was an impersonal Being without passions—an “it.” It exists without a body in an invisible, immaterial “spirit” form that completely and literally fills the universe. Though the mortal Savior repeatedly referred to our mutual Father, the creeds negate his literal fatherhood. Divine Being is a grand, incomprehensible, ethereal, changeless something that has no particular relationship to us and no feelings for us. And then, as we will consider in the next chapter, there is the utter absurdity of the doctrine of trinitarianism with its three persons in one substance and its awkward, ex post facto, provision of a dual (human and divine) nature.

I pity Owen and Mosser and other Evangelical apologists. Though they have intellectualized and have learned to logically vocalize the concepts, surely their intuitive spiritual needs are not fully met by this empty concept of God. Yet they continue to serve as its apologists. Mortality is inevitably difficult for each of us. How blessed we are to know of a loving, concerned Father and his equally loving Son who are both striving mightily for our eternal spiritual welfare and yearning for our eventual return to them. How comforting it is to pray to a personal, deeply loving, and intently listening Father. Your Father’s very purpose is your temporal and spiritual welfare. How sterile the exercise of praying to a dispassionate, unfeeling, unimaginable entity.

In short, we reject the idea that God the Father is unknowable, omnipresent, incorporeal, impassible, invisible, or consubstantial. He is not an incomprehensible spirit deity. We reject these ideas because they are false. None of these characteristics is mentioned anywhere in the Bible. They are all the additions of men.

1 For a discussion of the light of God or the light of Christ, see volume 1, chapter 15, The Concept of Light.

2 For a more detailed discussion of the phenomenon of transfiguration, see volume 3, chapter 14, Transfiguration.