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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

Joseph Smith, Mormon studies, social Trinity, Godhead, tritheism

College

Humanities

Department

Philosophy

Abstract

Excluding his claim to the resumption of public revelation and its, corollary, the re-opening of the canon, perhaps no other Mormon doctrine has received as much criticism as the conception and formulation of the trinity by Joseph Smith and his successors. Ever since Joseph declared that God the Father and Jesus Christ had appeared to him as two distinct personages in the spring of 1820, the cry of tritheism from Mormonism’s detractors has been both loud and persistent. For instance, early on, British theologian T.W.P. Taylder, asserted that Mormon doctrine was tri-theistic because it denies the “unity of the Godhead.” In modern times, Carl Mosser (along with the other editors of The New Mormon Challenge) has taken up this cry of heresy. In his writings on Mormonism, he has consistently maintained that Joseph’s model does not qualify as a version of “monotheism”, and hence Mormonism does not qualify as Christian. For Mosser, Mormonism’s rejection of the “ontological oneness” if the persons of the trinity, “strikes at the heart of the theological gap that presently separates all varieties of Mormonism from Christianity.” I argue, and research has proven, that such disparagement is undeserved. In the following, I argue that Joseph’s model of the New Testament Godhead is an instance of social trinitarianism (ST). As such, many contemporary Christian theologians are asserting views that are very similar, and in some cases seemingly identical to what Joseph asserted.

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