“How does the Holy Ghost differ from the Father and the Son? Why is that difference important to us?” (Gospel Principles, 32)
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: The Biblical Doctrine of
the Trinity
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What does the Bible teach about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
We can properly understand the Holy Spirit only by understanding how he relates to the Father and the Son. The New Testament reveals that the Holy Spirit (also called the Spirit, the Spirit of truth, and so on) is a divine person, distinct from the Father and the Son, yet acting on their behalf (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13-15; Acts 13:2, 4). The King James Version usually uses the title “Holy Ghost” instead of Holy Spirit, but “Ghost” and “Spirit” both translate the same Greek word pneuma (for example, compare Luke 11:13 with 12:10, 12; 1 Thessalonians 1:5-6 with 4:8).
The three persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the one divine object of Christian faith, as signified in baptism (Matthew 28:19). Each of these persons is God, the Lord (Matthew 11:25; John 1:1; 17:3; 20:28; Acts 5:3-4, 9; Romans 10:9-13; 2 Corinthians 1:3; 3:17-18), and yet there is only one God (John 5:44; 1 Timothy 2:5; James 2:19). Because he is one God with the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of the Father (Matthew 10:20), the Spirit of the Son, Jesus Christ (Romans 8:9; Galatians 4:6; Philippians 1:19; 1 Peter 1:11-12), as well as the Spirit of God (Romans 8:9; Ephesians 4:20) and the Spirit of the Lord (Acts 5:9; 8:39). This understanding of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as eternally and indivisibly one God is what Christians historically call the doctrine of the Trinity.
The first Article of Faith of the LDS Church states, “We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.” This statement sounds like an affirmation of the Trinity, and at first Joseph Smith apparently accepted the Trinity as best he understood it. Thus, the Book of Mormon affirms that the redeemed will sing eternal praises “unto the Father, and unto the Son, and unto the Holy Ghost, which are one God” (Mormon 7:7; see also 2 Nephi 31:21; Alma 11:44). However, other statements on this subject from later revelations of Joseph Smith do not agree with the Trinity. To understand why, we must recognize that his doctrine of God changed dramatically after he had founded the LDS Church in 1830. After we review these developments, we will be able to return to a comparison of LDS doctrine with the teaching of the Bible.
From One God to Three Gods
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What does Joseph Smith’s changing theology tell us about the source of his revelations?
Joseph Smith’s theological changes after 1830 went through at least two significant stages. First, in the original work called Doctrine and Covenants, published in 1835, Joseph Smith included a series of lectures and catechism entitled On the Doctrine of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, or more briefly, Of Faith. This material, later called Lectures on Faith, remained part of the LDS Church’s Doctrine and Covenants until 1921, when the LDS hierarchy removed them. Lectures on Faith did not teach the doctrine of the Trinity, and it also taught a very different doctrine than what Mormons believe today:
There are two personages who constitute the great, matchless, governing and supreme power over all things…. They are the Father and the Son: The Father being a personage of spirit, glory and power: possessing all perfection and fullness: The Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, a personage of tabernacle…. And he being the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, and having overcome, received a fullness of the glory of the Father—possessing the same mind with the Father, which mind is the Holy Spirit, that bears record of the Father and the Son, and these three are one, or in other words, these three constitute the great, matchless, governing and supreme power over all things: by whom all things were created and made, that were created and made; and these three constitute the Godhead, and are one: The Father and the Son possessing the same mind, the same wisdom, glory, power and fullness: Filling all in all—the Son being filled with the fullness of the Mind, glory and power, or, in other words, the Spirit, glory and power of the Father… (V.2).
At this stage in Joseph Smith’s doctrinal development, he viewed the “Godhead” as consisting of two “personages” (the Father and the Son) united by a single mind, the Holy Spirit. (The lectures make no distinction between Holy Spirit and Holy Ghost.) Furthermore, Joseph thought that the Father was “a personage of spirit” whereas the Son was “a personage of tabernacle,” that is, a person with a physical body of flesh. In fact, according to this same passage, the Son “is called the Son because of the flesh,” proving that at this time Joseph did not teach that the Father had a body of flesh.
If you are familiar with the teachings of the LDS Church today, you can see why they eventually removed these lectures from their scriptures: the lectures simply do not agree with current LDS doctrine. In fact, they do not agree with the doctrine that Joseph Smith himself developed just a few years later. By 1841, Joseph was teaching that “the Son [has] a tabernacle and so [does] the Father, but the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit without tabernacle” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith [2007], 42). By this time, Joseph had concluded that the Father and the Son both had physical bodies, while the Holy Ghost, though a “personage,” did not have a physical body. In 1843, Joseph gave a sermon in which he made the following remark:
The Holy Ghost is a personage and a person cannot have the personage of the H[oly] G[host] in his heart (An American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith, ed. Scott H. Faulring [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987], 341).
It is clear that at this point Joseph did not regard the Holy Ghost as a spiritual power or mind that was present everywhere, but as a “personage” with a specific location and form, even though that form was not physical in substance. Thus, on another occasion that same year, Joseph stated:
The Holy Ghost is a personage, and is in the form of a personage (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 276).
In 1844—just weeks before his death—Joseph Smith claimed that he had always taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were three Gods:
I will preach on the plurality of Gods. I have selected this text [Revelation 1:6] for that express purpose. I wish to declare I have always and in all congregations when I have preached on the subject of the Deity, it has been the plurality of Gods. It has been preached by the Elders for fifteen years. I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and that the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods. If this is in accordance with the New Testament, lo and behold! we have three Gods anyhow, and they are plural: and who can contradict it! (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 370).
Despite Joseph’s claim that he had always taught a plurality of Gods, the evidence clearly shows that in his earliest years he explicitly taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit) were one God, not three Gods (see also our study on chapter 5 of Gospel Principles). We have also seen that for a few years Joseph taught that the Holy Ghost was the shared mind of the Father and the Son, not “a distinct personage.” We may summarize the change in the LDS Church’s theology as shown in the following table.
|
|
Father |
Son |
Holy Ghost |
Divine
Personages |
Number of
God/Gods |
|
Book of Mormon era
(1828-1830) |
spirit |
Flesh |
spirit |
Unstated
(One?) |
One God |
|
Book of Moses/ Lectures
on Faith era (1830-1835) |
Personage
of spirit |
Personage
of tabernacle/ flesh |
Mind/spirit of the Father and the Son |
Two |
One
Godhead |
|
Book of Abraham era
(1835-1844) |
Personage
of tabernacle (flesh) |
Personage
of tabernacle/ flesh |
Personage
of spirit |
Three |
Three Gods |
It is understandable for the theology of an uninspired human being to develop in stages and for his later views to contradict his earlier views. What is difficult to explain is why this would be the case with a supposedly inspired prophet and the supposedly ancient writings (Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, and Book of Abraham) that he claimed to translate by a supernatural gift. Joseph’s claim that all of these writings and his doctrinal teachings were inspired raises a number of troubling questions:
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If the Book of Mormon contains “the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ” (D&C 20:9) and is, as Joseph Smith claimed, “the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion” (a statement quoted in its Introduction), why does it not reveal that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three Gods?
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Why, indeed, does the Book of Mormon contradict this later teaching of Joseph Smith by saying that they are “one God”?
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If God had really inspired all of these writings, why was it necessary for the LDS Church to remove the Lectures on Faith after they had been part of its collection of scripture for 86 years?
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Why would Joseph claim in 1844 that he had always taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were three Gods, when the Book of Mormon, Lectures on Faith, and other early “revelations” contained no such teaching and explicitly taught otherwise?
The simplest and most reasonable answer to these questions is that Joseph Smith’s writings, including his supposed translations of ancient scriptures, were not inspired after all. Rather, they reflect his own halting, inconsistent theological development between 1828 and 1844.
Who Is the Holy Ghost?
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Is the Holy Ghost really our spirit brother?
The LDS Church accepts not only Joseph’s view that the Holy Ghost was a third God separate from the Father and the Son, but also the idea that all heavenly spirits other than the Father and his celestial wife (our “heavenly mother”), including Jesus, are their spirit sons and daughters. These doctrinal views led naturally to the conclusion that the Holy Ghost is another of God’s spirit sons. “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the Holy Ghost is a spirit man, a spirit son of God the Father” (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 6:249). In other words, the Holy Ghost is one of our spirit brothers in heaven—one who somehow became part of the Godhead. LDS leaders and theologians have no explanation for how this might have happened.
The notion that the Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit) is one of God’s many spirit sons not only has no support whatsoever in the Bible, it is inconsistent with what the Bible teaches. As we saw at the beginning of this study, the Holy Spirit is one God with the Father and the Son, so that the Bible calls him the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son (Jesus Christ). This inseparable relationship between the Holy Spirit and the other two divine persons implies that as “the eternal Spirit” (Hebrews 9:14) he has always been this divine Spirit. In other words, the Holy Spirit is not one of God’s many spirit sons who somehow advanced to the status of a member of the Godhead, but rather he is the Lord God (Acts 5:3-4, 9; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18). By the grace of God in redemption, believers are adopted to become “brothers” to God’s one and only divine Son, Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29; Hebrews 2:11-18). This means that we were not and are not brothers of the Holy Spirit. Rather, it is by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that we are able to call God our Father (Romans 8:14-17; Galatians 4:4-6).
Does the Holy Spirit Dwell in the Hearts of Believers?
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Why is it important to know whether the Holy Spirit really dwells in the hearts of true believers in Christ?
Earlier we quoted Joseph Smith’s statement in 1843, “The Holy Ghost is a personage and a person cannot have the personage of the H[oly] G[host] in his heart.” This is how the statement reads in the diary of Joseph Smith kept for him in 1843 by Willard Richards. Years after Joseph’s death, this statement appeared in the History of the Church (5:325) rewritten as follows: “…the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.” This is also how the statement appears in D&C 130, which was added to Doctrine and Covenants in 1876 (see D&C 130:22). There is an apparent discrepancy between these two versions of Joseph Smith’s statement:
|
Joseph Smith’s sermon at Ramus, IL (diary, April 1843) |
History of the Church 5:325 D&C 130:22 |
|
“The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s. The Son also, but the Holy Ghost is a personage and a person cannot have the personage of the H[oly] G[host] in his heart.” |
“The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.” |
Mormons reconcile these two doctrinal claims (not necessarily the above two versions of Joseph’s statement) by asserting that while the personage of the Holy Ghost cannot literally dwell in a human being’s heart, he can dwell in their hearts figuratively through the influence of the Spirit, the light of Christ. Gospel Principles, for example, states regarding the Holy Ghost, “He can be in only one place at a time, but His influence can be everywhere at the same time” (32). The Encyclopedia of Mormonism states, “In a figurative sense, the Holy Ghost dwells in the hearts of the righteous Saints of all dispensations” (2:649). According to Joseph Fielding Smith, there is a difference between the Holy Ghost (“also called the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of Truth, and the Comforter”), who is a personage, and “the other Spirit” that is the Light of Christ, which is an omnipresent influence:
This man here, another one over there, and a man over in England, are confirmed members of the Church. The question arises, ‘How can the Holy Ghost be with them all at the same time?’ He does not have to be, but the power of the Holy Ghost is such that it can be manifest in every place at the same moment of time…. Thus when it becomes necessary to speak to us, he is able to do so by acting through the other Spirit, that is, through the Light of Christ. (Doctrines of Salvation, 1:38, 40).
There are at least two problems with these explanations. The first is that the distinction has no support in the Bible. The “Spirit of Christ” and the “Holy Spirit” refer to the same divine person in the New Testament (see especially 1 Peter 1:11-12). Biblically, there is no “other Spirit” besides the Holy Spirit; Christians believe in “one Spirit” (Ephesians 4:4). The idea of an impersonal Spirit, a kind of divine force or energy, is unbiblical.
The second problem also has significant implications for our understanding of God and of the Christian life. As we have seen, the LDS Church teaches that the Holy Ghost cannot be in more than one place at a time and does not literally dwell in people’s hearts, although his influence can be felt everywhere and in the hearts of all faithful believers. This may sound like a reasonable distinction, but D&C 130:22 undermines this distinction in a surprising way. It states that the Father and the Son cannot dwell in human hearts because each of them has a body of flesh and bones (see also 130:3). The assumption here is that a physical being cannot literally inhabit the body of another physical being (let alone the bodies of all believing human beings). On the other hand, the Holy Ghost can “dwell in us” because he is not a physical being but rather a personage of Spirit. Yet the LDS doctrine now is that the Holy Ghost does not actually dwell in anyone, and indeed cannot dwell in everyone who believes because he cannot be in more than one place at a time. He “dwells” in people’s hearts only in the sense that his influence reaches their hearts in the form of the “Light of Christ,” the “Spirit of Christ” that is an omnipresent power or force.
In this figurative sense of “dwelling” in people’s hearts through the medium of a spiritual power or influence, could we not say that the Father or the Son can also “dwell” in people’s hearts? If the dwelling in people’s hearts is figurative, what is it about having bodies of flesh and bones that prevents the Father or the Son from dwelling figuratively in people’s hearts through the supposed impersonal energy or power that extends their influence everywhere? The claim that the Holy Ghost’s dwelling in human hearts is figurative undermines the distinction in D&C 130:22 between the Father and the Son, who because they have physical bodies cannot dwell in people’s hearts, and the Holy Ghost, who because he is a personage of spirit can do so. That distinction is completely irrelevant if the Holy Ghost does not actually dwell in people’s hearts.
The issue here is not merely one of abstract theological interest. It pertains directly to what sort of God we claim to worship and how we relate to this God. The three Gods of the LDS Church’s doctrine are all embodied, localized deities that can each be in only one place at a time. None of these Gods is actually here with us, right now. None of them can actually dwell in our hearts (or at least not in all of us all at once and so not in any of us at all times). The Holy Ghost is not really God (though in a secondary sense he is “a God”), but is one of the sons of Heavenly Father and the heavenly mother, and he can be “present” only through the medium of an impersonal force or power. When a Mormon thinks he feels the power of the Holy Ghost, what his own doctrine says is that he is feeling, not the personal presence of God himself, but an impersonal force emanating from one of the spirit sons of our heavenly parents—one of our spirit brothers.
How different the biblical conception of the Holy Spirit is! The Holy Spirit is himself the Lord; he is God (Acts 5:3-9; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18). God is one indivisible, infinite Spirit, personally and fully present everywhere at the same time (Genesis 28:15; 1 Kings 8:27; Psalm 139:7-10; Jeremiah 23:23-24; John 4:20-24; Acts 17:27-28; Ephesians 4:10-11). Thus, because he is God, the Holy Spirit can and does dwell in the hearts of everyone who truly believes in the Son Jesus Christ (Romans 8:9-11; 1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 John 4:4). In fact, because God is one indivisible being, those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells have the Father and the Son dwelling in them as well (John 14:23; 2 Corinthians 13:5). This personal union with Christ through the literal dwelling of the Holy Spirit provides to those who truly trust in Christ a quiet but firm assurance of God’s acceptance and of eternal life (Romans 8:9-16).
What the Holy Spirit Does
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Can the Holy Spirit ever disagree with the Holy Spirit? If not, what implications does this principle have?
Some of what the LDS Church teaches about the work or activities of the Holy Ghost agrees with the Bible. Mormons believe that the Holy Ghost bears witness to the Father and the Son (Gospel Principles, 32). Similarly, the Bible affirms that the Holy Spirit bears witness especially to the Son, Jesus Christ, revealing him to be our Savior and Lord (John 15:26; Acts 1:8; 1 Corinthians 12:3; 1 John 5:6).
On the other hand, some LDS teachings about the work of the Holy Spirit do not agree with the Bible. Three examples appear in the Gospel Principles chapter on the Holy Spirit.
- The LDS Church teaches that the Holy
Ghost taught Adam and Eve the gospel: “The Lord sent the
Holy Ghost to testify of the Father and of the Son and to
teach Adam and Eve the gospel” (Gospel
Principles, 31). This statement reflects the LDS
belief that the gospel of Jesus Christ—the “plan of
salvation”—was known just as clearly and explicitly
thousands of years before Jesus came as it is today. We see
this idea especially in the Book of Mormon, where prophets
hundreds of years before Jesus actually referred to him by
name and explicitly described his work of salvation. The
Bible, on the other hand, teaches that godly people, and
even holy angels, before the coming of Jesus into the world
did not know what God had planned. Even the Old Testament
prophets who prophesied about the coming Messiah did not
know specifically who, when, or how:
“As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things into which angels long to look” (1 Peter 1:10-12).
- Gospel Principles makes the claim that the Holy Spirit “will help us understand that we can become exalted like our heavenly Father. (See Romans 8:16-17.)” (32). Here is what Paul says: “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him” (Romans 8:16-17). What Paul says is that we can become glorified like Christ, not exalted like Heavenly Father. There is a big difference. To become glorified like Christ means to become perfect human beings bearing the image of God as exemplified in his Son Jesus Christ, resurrected to perfect, immortal life (Romans 8:18-29). What Mormons mean by becoming exalted like Heavenly Father is becoming a God—something that will never happen (Isaiah 43:10).
- Finally, the LDS Church claims that the Holy Ghost will bear “witness” to the truth of Mormonism. As has just been mentioned, Gospel Principles claims that the Holy Ghost will help us understand that we can become Gods. It also asserts that the Holy Ghost will testify to us that we were preexistent spirit children of the Father (32). More generally, the LDS Church claims that we should seek a witness of the Holy Ghost as the means to “know the truth of all things” (Moroni 10:5), including the truth of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the LDS Church itself. To this we must insist that the Holy Spirit will never reveal or testify to anything that disagrees with what he has already revealed in the Bible, which he inspired (2 Peter 1:20-21; 3:15-16). That is, the Holy Spirit will never contradict himself. Thus, when Joseph Smith begins by teaching that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God, changes to the view that they are two personages in one Godhead, and finally moves to the view that they are three Gods, we know that these supposed revelations cannot all come from the Holy Spirit. The way God wants us to determine if new teaching is from God is to compare that teaching with what we already know is Scripture (Acts 17:11). If we honestly and humbly seek God’s truth from his Word in this way, we may be assured that the real Holy Spirit will communicate truth to us consistently through the genuine Scriptures that he inspired (2 Timothy 3:15-17).
For further study:
Bowman, Robert M., Jr. “The Biblical Basis of the Doctrine of the Trinity: An Outline Study.” Outline with over a thousand biblical citations and a minimum of commentary in support of the doctrine of the Trinity. Includes a section specifically on the person of the Holy Spirit.
Wilson, Luke P. “Joseph Smith’s Changing Doctrine of Deity.” A study of how Joseph’s theology developed from monotheism to plurality of Gods.
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