Today is the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, the true eternal family of God’s existence. To celebrate, following first-century tradition, we eat neopolitan ice cream. (Didn’t you know? Love of ice cream is one of the marks of the true Church.)
Seriously, I don’t feel like there’s anything I can say. Since last Trinity Sunday, I’ve read a lot of preaching and writing on the Trinity from the second century to the twenty-first. The more I learn from truly brilliant minds exploring God’s self-revelation, the less significant seems anything I say.
Following that spirit, this post is a roundup of Random Posts, some of them about the Trinity.
- Mike Liccione has written a good one on his blog Sacramentum Vitae. Excerpt:
Properly appreciated, therefore, the doctrine of the Trinity tells us what life is for.
Hey, we were just talking about that.
- Cynthia at Mormon 2 Catholic breaks her long silence and bursts forth with a three-part series concerning the Catholic teaching of the Trinity and the Mormon teaching of the Godhead. She features comments from every Catholic’s favorite Mormon authority, Bruce R. McConkie. For example:
It follows that the devil would rather spread false doctrine about God and the Godhead, and induce false feelings with reference to any one of them, than almost any other thing he could do. The creeds of Christendom illustrate perfectly what Lucifer wants so-called Christian people to believe about Deity in order to be damned.
Yow. Get the story, part I, part II, part III. Another McConkie saying:
We do not worship the Son, and we do not worship the Holy Ghost. I know perfectly well what the scriptures say about worshipping Christ and Jehovah, but they are speaking in an entirely different sense–the sense of standing in awe and being reverentially grateful to him who has redeemed us. Worship in the true and saving sense is reserved for God the first, the Creator.
This brings to mind another question that I want to post about separately. Don’t let me forget.
- Mike Aquilina relates news of a discovery of a whole bunch of third-century Roman inscriptions, way up in Spain. The inscriptions are Christian in character, and include an image of Calvary. I wanna know what they all say, though.
By the way, Mike Aquilina’s blog is awesome. I probably know more than the average Catholic about Church Fathers and Church history, but The Way of the Fathers demonstrates time and time again that I don’t know a millionth of it. There really is an incredible amount of great spiritual writing, testimony to the beliefs of the historical Church, and archaeological evidence supporting the writing. And before anyone asks, I love this stuff anyway; I’m not just pointing it out as a commentary on the historical validity of any Mormon claims.
- Speaking of Mormons, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a Mormon blog that mentions the Catholic Church. By Common Consent has a post by J. Nelson-Seawright that briefly mentions Catholic just war doctrine.
- I was intrigued by this post at Dave’s Mormon Inquiry that mentions LDS president David O. McKay and Communism. It intrigues me because some time I’d like to learn more about LDS presidents dealing with Communism, as compared with Catholic leaders dealing with Communism.
- Last but not least, Bear has contributed a post continuing the abortion discussion at Mormons and Catholics.
Well, the more accurate answer (to those that understand what they are talking about), is that we do not worship the Son in his role as the Son, but that we do worship the Son in his role as the Father. i.e. we do not pray to Jesus Christ, we pray to the Father in the name of the Son. Now some will simply say it is a matter of convention, but I suspect that Elder McConkie became so emphatic on that point for the same reason I have outlined. I only have circumstantial evidence, however, BRM was not one to explain *why* he believed what he believed, which is why his theology, though widely respected, is more a matter of faith than rationality.
If it isn’t obvious, I am not talking about Sabellianism here, but rather King Follett Discourse style theology, where Jesus Christ is the Son to his Father, but the Father to his Sons.
You can get the first representation of the Calvary here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30757559@N00/
More links:
http://tinyurl.com/zhuq3
http://tinyurl.com/zflzm
In spanish:
http://tinyurl.com/gspbe
http://tinyurl.com/ktjqx
Well, if you’ve read the discussion on David O McKay and Communism over on Dave’s Mormon Inquiry, you’ll agree that the line between when an LDS Apostle is speaking in his prophetic office, and when he is just spouting his own opinion can sometimes get a little blurry. See specifically the remarks about how Ezra Taft Benson (rabid anti-communist) and Hugh B. Brown (more moderate in opinion), both Apostles, were often butting heads over the shape of official LDS doctrine.
Catholics need to keep this ambiguity in mind when reading Elder McConkie’s remarks on Catholicism. They should also note that while McConkie’s first edition of the famous (infamous?) book “Mormon Doctrine” referred to the Roman Catholic church specifically as the “Great and Abominable Church” of the LDS cannon, he was obliged to remove it from later editions.
In the end, the LDS faithful are repeatedly counseled to “follow living, not dead, prophets.”
For better or for wores, Bruce R. McConkie is a dead prophet. His remarks, where they conflict with modern position of Gordon B. Hinckley (the current prophet) and the LDS Church generally, are to be ignored in favor of the true current policy.
And as Joseph Fielding Smith (contra ETB) taught, the teachings of the living prophets must square with the scriptures as well. And as J. Reuben Clark taught, the only way we can tell for sure is to have the spirit of revelation ourselves.
In other words, truth is not a function of policy or preference. It is a function of reality. The reality of God’s will, to be sure, but not our preference as to what God’s will actually is. Policy as an implementation of truth, and truth in part the knowledge of divine policy or rather ordain-ance. But truth as nothing but ordinance or decree destroys the distinction between truth and will. Same deal with doctrine as nothing but truth – rather doctrine is taught *about* the truth, not truth itself.
I like what Mark says about the relationship of policy to truth. In fact as I rewrite and expand my blog entry on the Mormon Doctrine Style Guide, I might be tempted to state ideas to that effect. I have written somewhat about the relation of doctrine to truth, but I see some weaknesses in my discussion. My other points are to discuss the relation of the authority of the teacher and the authority of texts, the relation of policy or practice to doctrine, but my main concern has been to define and categorize which sources are properly considered doctrine and which aren’t. Bruce R. McConkie’s non-conference works falls outside my definition and it is also if note that where GBH and BRM disagree, Mormons should be more loyal to GBH (as Seth points out). Therefore, I have to see a heavy reliance on BRM as misguided. My style guide has suggestions on how to evaluate BRM’s doctinal soundness.
Here is what I wrote about doctrine and truth. I am thinking more in set theory, than I am in distinguishing between truth and someone’s authorative articulation of truth as they understand and perceive it.
BRM actually got in trouble, at least behind the scenes, for some of his comments on the Godhead. For example he clamped down hard on the 80′s BYU fad of establishing a personal relationship with Jesus, a fad that led students to self righteously glory in the works felt to have made their relationship much better than others. Now BRM makes some great doctrinally sound statements, as praying to the Father and only the Father is Mormonism’s leading defense against being portrayed as being in violation of monotheistic-sounding scripture passages. But he also appears to have gone overboard in countering the “personal relationship” craze, which in turn was countered by other leaders in conference, notably Elder Faust, and BRM’s own remarks in his now much beloved final conference address and hymn “I Believe in Christ.”
I haven’t read Cynthia’s essay, but it may warrant a more formal response.
Quite coincidently, the David O. McKay book contains the best description of how BRM’s 1st edition of Mormon Doctrine was censured, in part due to the Bishop of Salt Lake, Rev. Duanne Hunt, personally complaining about it to David O. McKay. I may do a blog entry summarizing that chapter, but it seems that the chapter was extended into an article co-written by Prince and a Catholic historian. The new article, which I haven’t seen, presumably gets more of the Catholic side of the story.
See:
http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/05/mha-casper-day-one/ comment #9
for more details.
I should note that, for much of the late 1800s and early to mid 1900s, both Mormon and Catholic writers were pretty free in taking cheap-shots at each other.
The essence of the rhetoric on both sides went more or less like this:
“Well, we may not be exactly like you majority Protestant Americans, but at least we aren’t like those wierd Mormons/Catholics!”
I think some of it was a case of one societal underdog currying favor with the mainstream by picking on another disliked underdog.
I’m sorry about the Mormon side of that rhetoric, to whatever extent it was happening.
Speaking of Mormons, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a Mormon blog that mentions the Catholic Church.
I guess you missed my post on the Pope at Auschwitz then!
I am remiss.
Kinda quiet here lately.
Indeed. I’ve been busy. Is there anything I have neglected to respond to?
No. Just withdrawal symptoms, that’s all.
Hahaha, I hear ya. I think we all got winded at once from the huge discussions.