Occasionally, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will express belief in the Trinity, which typically means he believes in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.[1] However, it’s rare for a member to embrace the doctrine as expressed in the orthodox confessions, which they have been taught are an abomination. Many LDS church members view the doctrine of the Trinity as the Achille’s heel of orthodox Christianity. This perception stems from its challenging and seemingly illogical nature, the discomfort many Christians experience when discussing it, and the inability many have to give satisfactory answers to common objections raised against it.
How can the Father be the Son? If the Father and Son are one, why does the Son pray to the Father? Some believers have made the issue more confusing with their explanations. We have probably all heard the egg being used to illustrate the Trinity since an egg has a shell, white, and yolk but is one egg. If you have heard that illustration, you may have noticed that it proves the opposite in reality. Nobody would argue that the egg yolk is the shell, the egg white is the yolk, or the shell is the whole egg.
It matters who God is. The God of the Bible doesn’t gloss over this. In fact, He makes a specific demand: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” [2] That makes us responsible for knowing which God is the true God and for worshipping Him alone. Jesus taught us that the first commandment goes beyond knowing “who” or even knowing “about” God. We don’t fulfill the first commandment unless we love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. We must know the God who reveals Himself in the Bible and love that God with all our being.
The God who speaks in the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments is the one true God. You might agree with that. But who is He? What is His nature? What kind of being is He? We want to know and believe what He tells us about Himself. This will be the subject of this essay.
“Heavenly Father,” as he is called in the LDS church, is nothing like the God who makes Himself known in the Bible. Despite the struggles Christians may have with explaining or understanding the doctrine of the Trinity, the God of the Bible is a Triune God. But the differences between the God of the Bible and Heavenly Father are far more extensive than this “novel” doctrine. To demonstrate this, we must consider some key differences between the Triune God and Heavenly Father.
Continue reading “The Triune God v. Heavenly Father”
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