(Scripture Reading Exercise).

THE UNITY AND THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF THE PERSONAGES OF THE GODHEAD.

SPECIAL TEXT: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen." (II Cor. xiii:14.)

DISCUSSION.

1. The Unity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost: While conceiving these three Divine Personages, as constituting an organized unit, a body or Divine Council, it should be remembered that their oneness consist in moral unity, not physical unity, or identity of substance or essence. In other words, they are distinct and separate personages, in the sense of being three separate and distinct individuals, a unity only in agreement of purpose, and unity of will for the accomplishment of certain definite ends,^[A] to bring to pass the immortality and eternal progress of man.^[B]

[Footnote A: The Three Personagess. "Everlasting covenants was made between three personages before the organization of this earth, and relates to their dispensation of things to men on the earth: these personages, according to Abraham's record, are called God the first, the Creator; God the second, the Redeemer; and God the third, the Witness or Testator."—Little & Richards' Compendium—Gems from the Prophet's Teachings—p. 289.]

[Footnote B: Doc. & Cov., Sec. xciii:26-35. Book of Moses, Pearl of Great Price, ch. iii., II Nephi ch. ii; also New Witnesses for God, Vol III, ch xl. where the matter is discussed at great length.]

Jesus himself taught that he and his Father were one,^[A] that whosoever had seen him had seen the Father also;^[B] that it was part of his mission to reveal God, the Father, through his own personality; for as was the Son, so too was the Father;^[C] hence Jesus was God manifested in the flesh, a revelation of God to the world;^[D] a revelation not only of the being of God, but of the kind of being God is.

[Footnote A: John x:30; xvii:11-22.]

[Footnote B: John xiv:9.]

[Footnote C: John xiv:1-9; John 1:8.]

[Footnote D: I Tim. iii:16.]

[Footnote: Eph iii:14-19.]

Jesus also prayed—and in so doing showed in what the oneness of himself and the Father consisted—that the disciples might be one with him, and also with each other, as he and the Father were one. Not one in person, not all merged into one individual, and all distinctions of personality lost; but one in mind, in knowledge, in love, in will; one by reason of the indwelling in all of the one spirit, even as the mind and will of God, the Father, was also in Jesus Christ.^[A]

[Footnote A: John xiv:10, 11, 19, 20.]

2. The Separate Individual Existence of the Father: The existence of God, the Father, both Jesus and the Apostles accepted as a reality. Jesus nowhere attempts to prove God's existence. He assumes that and proceeds from that basis with his doctrine. He declares the fact that God was his Father and frequently calls himself the Son of God, and prays to the Father in that capacity: "As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father. * * * Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life for the sheep. * * * This commandment have I received of my Father. * * * The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me. * * * For which of those do ye stone me? The Jews answered him. * * * Because that that thou being a man makest thyself God. * * * Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not."^[A]

[Footnote A: St. John x.]

The statement of Jesus when instituting the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper: "I will not drink hence forth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."^[A]

[Footnote A: Matt xxvi:29.]

The prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane: "O my Father if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." And again: "O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done."^[A]

[Footnote A: Ibid, verses 39, 42.]

John represents Jesus as saying in Gethsemane: "Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. * * * And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. * * * Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are. * * * That they all may be one: as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee. * * * O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee; but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me."^[A]

[Footnote A: St. John xvii.]

Then, after the resurrection of Jesus, he meets Mary of Magdala and said to her, when she in her joy was about to lay hold of him: "Touch me not; for I have not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God and your God."^[A]

[Footnote A: St. John xx.]

The separate and distinct individual existence of God the Father could not be more emphatically represented than in these scriptures.

3. The Separate and Individual Existence of the Son: The scriptures which teach the separate existence of the Father, teach also the separate and individual existence of the Son; but the question may arise, Was Jesus, the Son of God, also God? The passage already considered, in which Jesus is given equal rank with the Father and with the Holy Ghost, strongly implies that he is Divine, that he is Deity. In the Seventy's Year Book No. III, Lesson xxxiii, in treating at length upon the subject of the divinity of Jesus, the conclusion that Jesus, as well as the Father, is God, is worked out from the fact that Jesus is called God in the Scriptures;^[A] that Jesus declares himself to be God—the Son of God;^[B] that Jesus is to be worshiped—hence God;^[C] that Jesus, under the Father's direction, is the Creator, hence God;^[D] that Jesus Christ is declared to be equal with God the Father, hence God.^[E] All these declarations are sustained by the scriptures and reasoned out in detail in the lesson of Year Book III cited above, and to that work the student is referred. Here it will be only necessary to cite the scriptures which sustain these several specific declarations concerning Jesus, the Christ, which I have done by giving them in the margin.^[F]

[Footnote A: Isaiah vii:14; Matt. i:23; Isaiah ix:6.]

[Footnote B: John x:33; Matt. xxvii:63, 64; Matt. xxviii:18, 19; Heb. i:8.]

[Footnote C: Rev. xix;10 c. f; Heb. i:5, 6; Phil. ii:9, 10.]

[Footnote D: St. John i:1-4; Col. i:12-17; Heb. i:2.]

[Footnote E: Matt. xxviii:18, 19; Phil. iii:6; Heb. iii:3; Col. i:19: ii:9; II. Nephi xxvi:12.]

[Footnote F: The student will also find an elaborate discussion on the subject in the writer's "Mormon Doctrine of Deity," chapter iv. And also in his "Introduction to the History of the Church," Vol. I, pp. 81-89.]

Jesus, then, is separate and distinct from God, the Father; but is nevertheless not only divine, but Deity, equally so with the Father; for God so declares it, through his revelation to the world; but he is united with the Father in moral union of mind and will, and purpose.