The Trinity

THE HOLY TRINITY

Unity of the Godhead

WE believe in God the Eternal Father, and in His Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost."

So runs the first of the "Articles of Faith" of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A similar asseveration of belief has place in most creeds or churches called Christian. The Scriptures affirm the existence of the Supreme Trinity, constituting the Godhead, the governing Council of the heavens and the earth.

The very name "Trinity" which is commonly current in the literature of Christian theology, connotes three distinct entities, and such we believe to be the scriptural signification and therefore expressive of the actual constitution of the Godhead. Three Personages are comprised, each designated by the exalted title "God", and each of whom has separately and individually revealed Himself to mankind; these are (1) God the Eternal Father, (2) God the Son, or Jesus Christ, and (3) God the Holy Ghost.

That the three are individually separate and distinct Personages is evidenced by such Scriptures as the following. As our Lord Jesus Christ emerged from the baptismal waters of Jordan, John, the officiating priest, recognized the visible sign of the Holy Ghost, while he saw before him the Christ with a tangible body of flesh and bones, and heard the voice of the Eternal Father saying: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." (Matt. 3:16, 17). The three Personages were there present, each manifesting Himself in a different manner to mortal sense, and plainly, each distinct from the others.

Again, in that last solemn interview with His apostles on the night of the betrayal, the Lord Jesus thus cheered with sublime assurance their sorrowful despair: "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me." (John 15:26.) Could the members of the Trinity be more definitely segregated? That the Comforter is the Holy Ghost is expressly set forth in the preceding chapter (John 14:26), and in that passage also the Father and the Son are as separately specified.

That the Eternal Father and His Son Jesus Christ are individual Personages is clear from the very fact of the relationship expressed, for no being can be his own father or his own son. The numerous Scriptures in which Christ is shown as praying to His Father abundantly testify of Their distinct personality; and, furthermore, amidst the indescribable glory of our Lord's transfiguration, from out of the cloud came the voice of the Father, avowing again: "This is my beloved Son."

The individual members of the Holy Trinity are united in purpose, plan, and method. To conceive of disagreement, differences, or dissension among them would be to regard them as lacking in the attributes of perfection that characterize Godhood. But that this unity involves any merging of personality is nowhere attested in Scripture, and the mind is incapable of apprehending such a union.

In the course of His soulful High-Priestly prayer, Christ supplicated the Father in behalf of the Apostles, asking "that they may be one" as He and the Father were one (John 17:11). Surely the Lord did not intimate that He would have the Apostles lose their individuality and become one person; and indeed, He had long before assured them that at a time which is even yet future they "shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." (Matt. 19:28.)

Human knowledge concerning the attributes of God and the nature of the Godhead is such as has been revealed from the heavens. Divine revelation is the ultimate source of all we know of the being and personality of the Deity. Through revelation in ancient days God was made known to man—to Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the prophets. And in the present age, after mankind had in great measure come to reject the plain and simple truths of a personal God and His actual Son Jesus Christ, such as the Scriptures affirm, the Father and the Son have revealed Themselves anew.

Joseph Smith has given us his solemn testimony that in the early spring of 1820, while engaged in solitary prayer, to which he had been impelled by scriptural admonition (James 1:5), he was visited by the Eternal Father and His Son Jesus Christ, and that the Father, pointing to the Christ, spake, saying: "This is my beloved Son, hear Him."

In this wise was ushered in the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, foretold by the Apostle of old (Eph. 1:10). In 1820 there was on earth one mortal who knew beyond all question that the human conception of Deity, as an incorporeal essence of something possessing neither form nor substance, is as devoid of truth in respect to both the Father and the Son as its statement in formulated creeds is incomprehensible.

Joseph Smith has proclaimed anew to the world the simple truth that the Eternal Father and His glorified Son Jesus Christ are in form and stature perfect Men; and that in Their physical likeness mankind has been created in the flesh.

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(James E. Talmage, The Vitality of Mormonism [Boston: Gorham Press, 1919], 45.)