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How the church has changed belief in the Godhead
Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 1:19 pm
by stuck
My wife and I still read the scriptures together nightly. We recently read about Abinadi where he is talking about God and I commented that what he said was trinitarian and I had heard of this in my critical studies. She asked why would Joseph Smith change his views from one God to 3 separate beings. I told her that some of this could be seen in the Lectures on Faith but told her I would have to do some more research. I found this article searching exmormon.org. Here is a link hopefully and I will try to share it with my wife because it was written by a BYU history professor in 1980. The link is
mormonismi.net/pdf/Reconstruction_of_Mo ... xander.pdf
Re: How the church has changed belief in the Godhead
Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 1:24 pm
by stuck
If that link didn't work you can type in the full link which is mormonismi.net/pdf/Reconstruction_of_Mormon_Doctrine_Alexander.pdf
Re: How the church has changed belief in the Godhead
Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 2:55 pm
by græy
Good find. I'm reading through this now. Here is a fixed for anyone else who wants to click...
http://mormonismi.net/pdf/Reconstructio ... xander.pdf
Re: How the church has changed belief in the Godhead
Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 3:00 pm
by jfro18
The change in the godhead is damning because it forced Joseph to change the Book of Mormon, the First Vision, and even begins a stylistic change in the revelations
You can see it everywhere, and there's no way to get around the fact that Joseph Smith made these changes about 15 YEARS after claiming to see both Jesus and God.
I think this is a bigger problem than many of the other Mormon issues, although it takes more time to understand which I think is why it does not get as much emphasis when people list issues with church history.
Re: How the church has changed belief in the Godhead
Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 3:13 pm
by A New Name
Here is a link to the same article found at
Signature books
Re: How the church has changed belief in the Godhead
Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 6:54 pm
by Keewon
I remember even as a missionary being perplexed by Abinadi, and 3 Nephi: "I come .. to do the will, both of the Father and of the Son—of the Father because of me, and of the Son because of my flesh."
It was when I stumbled on a photocopy of the original 1830 BofM and saw all the changes in wording from "God" to "son of God" that it first hit me- JS taught the Trinity! Just like in the Lectures on Faith. Except it didn't bother me in LonF- it was just one of those things that, once you see it, you see it everywhere.
That, plus timeline problems, were the first two cracks to more or less spontaneously appear in my post-mission faith. (And long before the Internet, if friends and family want to know.
)