Jason Bourne wrote:Again I understand the divergence. But here is the problem I have. The history of how what is now generally accepted as the teachings on the nature of the Godhead from the days of Christ forward have been fraught with debates, posturing, politicking and have taken hundreds of years to develop. And while I am not an expert on all the twists and turns of trinity theology I do believe there are still diverging and competing views today about this interesting topic. Just what is the nature of God. I hardly think, and I believe most Orthodox Christian theologians would agree, that you cannot get what is considered Orthodox from the Bible alone. And there are contradicting statements in the Bible about the Godhead and what it means that there are three persons called God yet still considered One God.
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.
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.
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." 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.
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.