The Rise and Fall of NauvooRoberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
History
The Rise and Fall of Nauvoo
Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Latter Day Saints -- Illinois -- Nauvoo; Nauvoo (Ill.) -- History
it is quite evident that new ideas pertaining to God were about to
be promulgated among men. The facts of this vision were quite at
variance with the orthodox notions entertained about the Godhead.
It is quite true that Christians talked about the Father and the
Son, and as for the latter they had to concede that He was in the
form of man, and remains so to this day, as they have no reason to
believe that the all-glorious resurrected body of flesh and bones
with which Jesus ascended to His Father has been dissolved and become
incorporeal; but no orthodox Christian believed that the Father and the
Son of the Scriptures were two distinct and separate individuals--a
conclusion which this very first vision of the Prophet's forces upon
the understanding if it is believed. The anthropomorphism of the
vision is also too emphatic for the orthodox conception of God; for
notwithstanding the Scriptures teach that man was created in the image
of God; [1] and that Jesus Christ was the express image of His Father's
person [2]--and certainly Jesus was in the form of man--yet the
Christian orthodoxy gave such explanations of these facts of Scripture
that they accepted not at all the idea that God the Father was a
personage like unto man in form and as distinct as to His person from
His Son Jesus Christ as is any father and son among men. The orthodox
creed of the Godhead is as follows:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of all
things visible and invisible; and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the
Son of God begotten of the Father, only begotten (that is) of the
substance of the Father; God of God, Light of Light, very God
of very God; begotten, not made; of the same substance with the
Father, by whom all things are made, that are in heaven and that
are in earth; who for us men, and for our salvation, descended and
was incarnate, and became man; suffered and rose again the third
day, ascended into the heavens and will come to judge the living
and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit. But those who say there was
a time when He [the Son] was not, and that He was not before He
was begotten, and that He was made out of nothing or affirm that
He is of any other substance or essence, or that the Son of God
was created, and mutable, or changeable, the Catholic Church doth
pronounce accursed.
This is the creed of St. Athanasius, formulated at the Council of
Nice, A.D. 325, and is universally accepted by orthodox Christians.
The explanation of the creed as given by Athanasius will also be of
interest:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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