Aristotle Smith wrote:I would agree that Christian trinitarianism is not to be found in the Bible. Also, Mormon tri-theism is also not to be found in the Bible. As you point out the Bible makes many statements that at least appear to be contradictory, if not actually contradictory. Both orthodox Christians and Mormon attempt to solve this problem, but they go about it in fundamentally different ways.
The crux of the problem is that at the time of Jesus you have the following: 1) Jewish belief at that time was strictly monotheistic, and the Old Testament was read to be supporting strict monotheism and 2) The New Testament talks about Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as being diving. That's the conundrum you have to solve, after that most of the contradictions become details.
I disagree that there is a real conflict in these two propositions. First, Judaism in the Greco-Roman period can be called monotheistic, but some qualification is necessary. It was monotheistic in the sense that it accepted a single high god, but it acknowledged a coterie of other divine beings that were objects in the literature of prayer and sometimes even worship (proskynesis). The Son of Man figure from Daniel and Enoch, for instance, is said to receive worship several times in Enoch and even in the Old Greek of Daniel. Angels are prayed to frequently in apocalyptic literature, and early Jewish and Christian literature seems preoccupied in some places with stemming the tide of their worship. In Qumran's 4Q246 the "people of God" will receive worship from the nations (cf. Rev 3:9). All these things within Judaism really make Christ's divinity a non-issue in the earliest literature. It's not until John that we first see attempts to align his identity in some sense with God's, and that's the first place where the concern is with his relationship with God rather than his claims to be the Son of God. That he was simply considered divine would not have raised an eyebrow among the vast majority of Jews during this time period.
Aristotle Smith wrote:The orthodox strategy was to preserve as much of the Jewish belief as possible. Trinity attempts to preserve strict monotheism as much as possible so that Christians can still be strict monotheists. A lot of the technicalities of the trinity are attempts to shore up this goal. While there was a lot of bickering, the overarching goal for the orthodox Christians was to preserve that Jewish heritage. Much of the early Christian heresies (such as Arianism and gnosticism) were heresies precisly because they chose to deviate from that Jewish heritage.
I disagree. There were a number of issues addressed in the christological debates, but I don't see any of them as primarily or even partially concerned with preserving Jewish heritage. Pretty much all of them have only to do with Christ's nature and relationship to God and the Spirit, and as far as I am aware, they all arose within exclusively Christian circles and addressed exclusively Christian concerns. For instance, one of the earliest questions was whether or not Jesus was divine. The arguments involve the Gnostics, the Ebionites, the Arians, the Docetists, and others, and they always had to do with how Christ was described in the New Testament. Then you have the question of the person of Jesus. How did his divine nature and his human nature coexist? This revolves around philosophical questions first raised by Christian apologists in the second century. Another concern (the main one addressed at Nicea) addressed the generation of Jesus. Was he begotten somewhere in time, or was he "eternally begotten"? Again, this is a philosophical question that again arose from the speculation of apologists. There's also the Filioque question and the one of subordination.
Aristotle Smith wrote:The Mormon strategy is an attempt to get behind the Jewish belief to an earlier belief. This makes sense for Mormons because the Mosaic law is seen as a "lesser law" and the Jews a people with "lesser light and knowledge."
I don't think this is unique or original to Mormonism. This is actually a great description of the Patristic approach to Judaism. For the early Christians, Judaism was a carnal and base precursor to Christianity, which existed as a more pure and spiritual fulfillment of the latter. You find the seeds of this in Paul's notion that the law is a schoolmaster that leads to Christ, and that it is full of types and shadows that point to Christ. The Jews are those who do not yet see the true meaning of the scriptures. Justin Martyr, for instance, repeatedly scolded Trypho for not knowing the true meaning of his own scriptures. This is what gave rise to the prominence of allegory in Alexandrian exegesis (and even for a time in Antiochene exegesis). Origen said that the Old Testament was only old for those who read it literally. For Christians, who read it according to its true sense, it was another New Testament. He said that to read it without allegory was to make it a book too full of absurdities, contradictions, and matters too base for the spiritually minded. He also compared Judaism to the children's milk and the weak man's vegetables, and Christianity to the solid food of Christ's athletes. This perspective was standard fare from the second to the fourth centuries (too many people don't recognize Origen's deep and lasting contributions to Christian exegesis and theology).
Aristotle Smith wrote:Thus, the model for Mormons is to be pre-Mosaic. Mormons correctly picked up on a henotheism in the book of Genesis. This leads to tri-theism being o.k., because Mormons would see strict monotheism as not especially necessary to preserve. This is also what makes things like the King Follett discourse work, there can be as many gods as you want because strict monotheism is not an overarching goal.
It seems to me you're arguing that strict monotheism begins with Moses, and if that's the case then I have to emphatically disagree.
Aristotle Smith wrote:I also think this attempt to get back to the earliest forms of worship in the Bible is also what lead to polygamy, since Genesis tends to have the most positive outlook on polygamy in the entire Bible.
Interesting idea.