Mormons and the Trinity

What Is the Trinity?

If by "the doctrine of the Trinity" one means the New Testament teaching that there is a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost, all three of whom are fully divine, then Latter-day Saints believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. It is as simple as that. The Latter-day Saints' first article of faith, written by Joseph Smith in 1842., states, "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost." Baptisms in the Church are performed "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (see D&C 20:73). The prayer of blessing on the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is addressed to God the Eternal Father in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, to the end that those who partake may have his Spirit to be with them (see D&C 20:77-79). Latter-day Saints thoroughly agree with the biblical doctrine of the threefold nature of the Godhead and of the divinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

However, if by "the doctrine of the Trinity" one means the doctrine formulated by the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon and elaborated upon by subsequent theologians and councils-that God is three coequal persons in one substance or essence-then Latter-day Saints do not believe it. They do not believe it, because it is not biblical. Words central to the orthodox understanding of the Trinity-words like coequal, consubstantial, and circumincession, or the word trinity itself, for that matter-are not found in scripture.fn The term trinity (Latin trinitas) was first used by Tertullian around the beginning of the third century A.D. The Nicene and Chalcedonian Fathers tried to find scriptural terms for their new formulae but were unable to do so.

The scriptures themselves do not offer any explanation of how the threeness and the oneness of God are related. The biblical writers were singularly uninterested in that problem or in questions dealing with God's essence, his substance, or the philosophical definition of his nature. These later concerns are elaborations upon the biblical doctrine of God, elaborations formulated to answer in philosophically respectable terms the questions and objections of Hellenistic thinking concerning the primitive Christian doctrine. Christian intellectuals of the fourth and fifth centuries felt that the biblical language was too unsophisticated and inadequate for this purpose, and so they attempted to supplement and improve it with their own best efforts.


(Stephen E. Robinson, Are Mormons Christians? [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1991], 72.)