The objection
Father, Son and Spirit could be three separate beings who agree perfectly. After all, Jesus also asks that his disciples be one as he and the Father are.
1. This position asserts a different kind of unity
The official LDS account describes Father, Son and Spirit as separate beings and explains their unity through perfect agreement in purpose and doctrine.[1] This precisely identifies the difference from the classical confession. The question is not whether they love each other but whether their deity is numerically undivided.
Three perfectly unanimous humans do not form a single human reality. Agreement alone therefore cannot sustain the statement of one God. Further reasons would be necessary.
2. John 17 does not make the disciples divine persons
Jesus' request contains a comparison: The disciples' fellowship is to correspond to that of Father and Son. A comparison, however, does not transfer every attribute of its model. Otherwise the disciples would become not merely unanimous but uncreated and omniscient.
Believers' unity is received and creaturely. The unity of Father and Son is its ground and model. That the imitation is limited does not prove that the model, too, possesses only creaturely agreement. This limitation would need justification from further texts.
3. The statements about creation require more than cooperation
Isaiah 44 connects God's uniqueness with his being the sole Creator. John 1 contrasts everything that came into being with the Logos through whom it arose. The statement about the Logos therefore breaks through the notion of another created collaborator.[2]
1. Corinthians 8,6 jointly assigns Father and Jesus Christ to the origin of all things while Paul rejects many so-called gods and lords. The Christian answer preserves the one divine origin and personal distinction. It does not redefine monotheism as mere loyalty to a particularly harmonious group of gods.
4. The difference also concerns the foundation of interpretation
Where later revelatory claims determine the understanding of biblical texts, a shared use of the word “Bible” is insufficient. Conversation must therefore clarify which authority ultimately determines the texts' meaning.
We begin with God's self-revelation in scripture. Its witness requires the Son's full deity without a second divine origin alongside the one God. Perfect agreement belongs to this; it is, however, no sufficient substitute definition for the undivided deity of which the Trinitarian confession speaks.
Biblical texts in context
Sources and further study
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, GodheadOfficial account: three separate beings united in purpose and doctrine.
- Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian FaithJohn 1,1–3: the Logos and the boundary between Creator and creature, pp. 299–305.