Justin Martyr: "Against Trinity"

The Church of Jesus Christ is not a Protestant religion but restored Christianity. We do not claim to be a branch or offshoot of the Catholic Church because if that church is incorrect, then all branches off it are incorrect together. The LDS Church interpret the Bible foretelling a falling away or apostasy of Christ's church (2 Thes. 2: 3). Just like God the Father allowed His Son to be crucified, God also allowed man to desecrate His temple, martyr His Apostles, and destroy His church. But just as Christ was resurrected, so too would God raise His temple, Church, and Holy Word in the last days before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (Dan. 2: 28, 44).

But, the original Church, doctrine, and authority did not disappear immediately after the martyrdom of the Apostles. The LDS Church does not accept the many so-called Orthodox Christian Creeds like the doctrine of the Trinity which was established at the Council of Nicaea in the 325. The LDS Church General Authorities have claimed that LDS Doctrine is more similar to 1st-Century Christian doctrine than 3rd-Century Christian Doctrine.

Other than the New Testament itself, there is a wonderful collection of writings from the earliest Bishops of the Primitive Christian Church. These Early Church Fathers such as Polycarp, Ignatius, and Clement knew the Apostles personally and were appointed to shepherd several local churches. While not scripture, it is fascinating to read through the writing of these Early Church Fathers and identify doctrines such as the 3-degrees of glory, and priesthood organization and hierarchy which are unique to the LDS Church today.

Another example of doctrine by the Early Christian Fathers being more similar to LDS then the Protestant, is concerning God. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, continually refers to Christ as the First-Born of the Father and Church as the Church of the First-Born. LDS recognize that Christ was the first generative spirit-creation of God the Father, since before the beginning in addition to being the Only Begotten Son of God according to the flesh. In addition to the words of Bishop Ignatius, Justin Martyr, also a 1st-Century Christian, also speaks on the nature of the God head. In his debate with the Trypho (a Jew), he is trying to persuade him from the Old Testament that while they believe in the same God, we still need to believe and accept Jesus Christ as God and the Son of God.

So, the question here between LDS and Evangelicals concerning the Trinity as explained in the Nicene Creed is whether God and Christ are the same being or two separate and distinct beings. The LDS belief in the God Head is very similar to the Nicene Creed except on one issue. The Nicene Creed claims that God and the Son are not only "One God", but they are of "One Substance." LDS and other Christian scholars confess that this part of the Nicene Creed on being "One Substance" has no Biblical support and it is the part of the Trinity Doctrine that believers in the Trinity cannot explain. LDS, on the other hand can easily explain how God the Father and God the Son, while separate beings, can constitute one God by understanding their oneness and unity of purpose.

LDS do believe that God the Father, God, the Son Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Ghost are all divine, are all God, and constitute One God in purpose. But we believe that the Father and Son are 3 distinct entities in name, in person, in being, in substance, and in unified will. When Joseph Smith had his First Vision of the Father and the Son, Joseph saw (after Satan gathered darkness and seized his tongue to prevent him from praying) the glory of God as a pillar of light and fire, and in that light he saw 2 distinct personages who were in the appearance of men with glorified and tangible bodies. The same thing that Stephen saw prior to being stoned to death. Stephen looked up into heaven and declared that he "saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God."

Justin Maryr comments to Trypho Chapter LXI—Wisdom is begotten of the Father, as fire from fire.“

I shall give you another testimony, my friends,” said I, “from the Scriptures, that God begat before all creatures a Beginning,[who was] a certain rational power [proceeding] from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos; and on another occasion He calls Himself Captain, when He appeared in human form to Joshua the son of Nave (Nun). For He can be called by all those names, since He ministers to the Father’s will, and since He was begotten of the Father by an act of will; just as we see happening among ourselves: for when we give out some word, we beget the word; yet not by abscission, so as to lessen the word means both the thinking power or reason which produces ideas and the expression of these ideas. When we utter a thought, the utterance of it does not diminish the power of thought in us, though in one sense the thought has gone away from us. [which remains] in us, when we give it out: and just as we see also happening in the case of a fire, which is not lessened when it has kindled [another], but remains the same; and that which has been kindled by it likewise appears to exist by itself, not diminishing that from which it was kindled. The Word of Wisdom, who is Himself this God begotten of the Father of all things, and Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and the Glory of the Begetter.

What do we learn from this? This is speaking about the creation or the spiritual begetting of Christ as the First-Born creation of God the Father who was Jehovah of the Old Testament who appeared to Joshua (in human form). First we lean that Christ was the first spiritual offspring of God the Father before the Creation. Also I will remind the reader that creation is not from nothing, so even though Christ is created, he is also eternal and self-existent. But there was some generative process which organized the Son as God and the Son of God. Something can be both created and eternal because create means to organize and not to conjure out of nothingness.

Additionally, we learn that separating the Son from the Father does not divide or lessen God the Father any more than dividing a fire, or saying a word diminishes the ability of the person who said the word to think of more words. This is a very important argument for Justin to make because according to the Trinity Doctrine, only the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost together constitute the perfect expression of deity. If you separated the Father and the Son, God would cease to be all powerful and merciful, kind, and just. But according to LDS doctrine on the nature of God, God the Father is perfect, all-knowing and all-powerful alone without the other members of the Godhead. The Trinity Doctrine establishes the situation where the Son and Holy Ghost were sent to save, complete, and perfect the Father as much as they were sent to save, complete and perfect man. This is not true. The Son was sent bring man to the Father and by the Holy Ghost, the Father can dwell with us and in us. And, according to Justin, separating the Father and the Son does not diminish from the perfection of either any more than dividing flames would diminish the flame.

Justin Maryr comments to Trypho Chapter LXII.—The words “Let Us make man” agree with the testimony of Proverbs."

And the same sentiment was expressed, my friends, by the word of God [written] by Moses, when it indicated to us, with regard to Him whom it has pointed out, that God speaks in the creation of man with the very same design, in the following words: ‘Let Us make man after our image and likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heaven, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creeping things that creep on the earth. And God created man: after the image of God did He create him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them, and said, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and have power over it. And that you may not change the [force of the] words just quoted, and repeat what your teachers assert,—either that God said to Himself, ‘Let Us make,’ just as we, when about to do something, oftentimes say to ourselves, ‘Let us make;’ or that God spoke to the elements, to wit, the earth and other similar substances of which we believe man was formed, ‘Let Us make,’—I shall quote again the words narrated by Moses himself, from which we can indisputably learn that [God] conversed with some one who was numerically distinct from Himself, and also a rational Being. These are the words: ‘And God said, Behold, Adam has become as one of us, to know good and evil.’ In saying, therefore, ‘as one of us,’ [Moses] has declared that [there is a certain] number of persons associated with one another, and that they are at least two. For I would not say that the dogma of that heresy which is said to be among you is true, or that the teachers of it can prove that [God] spoke to angels, or that the human frame was the workmanship of angels. But this Offspring, which was truly brought forth from the Father, was with the Father before all the creatures, and the Father communed with Him; even as the Scripture by Solomon has made clear, that He whom Solomon calls Wisdom, was begotten as a Beginning before all His creatures and as Offspring by God,

So, here we see Justin's interpretation of Genesis were it clearly states that God said, "let us create man in our image." Many Evangelicals have conjured up the theory that the language in use there is some sort of "Royal We" case and its not actually referring to multiple intelligent beings. Interesting that Justin fails to have gotten the email on that but makes the same conclusions the LDS do on this. The clincher is that Justin points out the significance of God and the Son together commenting that after Adam had partaken of the fruit, he had now become like them, knowing good and evil. Justin shows how this comment is unmistakable Biblical proof that the Father and the Son are both God and both divine but separate persons, beings, substances, and intelligences. Jesus Christ is literally the Son of the Living God.