Mormonism and the Trinity: Uncovering the Differences and Deception
Feb 27, 2025
I wrote an article a few years ago about Mormonism and wanted to follow up on a few things.
Recently I came across a video on YouTube from a portion of a talk by Jeffrey R. Holland from the October 2007 General Conference, which I remember watching when I was younger before choosing to leave the Mormon Church, and it got me thinking again about how Mormon doctrines often sound true on the surface until you peel back the layers, sometimes only a little bit, and actually look closely at what the presidency of the Church is saying and doing.
If you read the Bible in full, and in context, especially taking into account the words of the Gospel of John, you can see that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Father and not a separate person, from important passages where this link is made and where he mentions that the Father is a symbol rather than a literal person:
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.
Then they took up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.
When he spoke in parables about the Father, as in the third person, he did so from a spirit of humility, so that he wouldn’t testify from his human manifestation alone, because the process of glorifying his human form wasn’t finished until the cross, and so that they wouldn’t stone and kill him until his Word was spoken. For these reasons, he’s obvious about it sparingly at first, until after the resurrection, once the unity between his divine side (the Father) and his human side (the Son) was complete.
We know from the Word that everything the Lord taught, he taught in parables (Mark 4:34). The literal meaning doesn’t always make sense to us at first, but the inner meaning, which is spiritual and has poetic significance, holds together perfectly.
When he did speak plainly, they immediately picked up stones because they didn’t acknowledge that he was and is the Father (John 1:1,14). The same denial occurs today among old church Christians as it did among the Jews, except today, the “stones” are spiritual, they’re words of false prophets seeking to deny his divinity, such as in this clip, below:
The statements by Holland in this talk are very deceptive because he made it sound like he was speaking the truth but then dropped a gross falsity into the middle of his talk, that destroyed the whole fruit, like a worm in the middle of an apple.
What preachers like this do is gradually talk you into nodding your head, thinking, “Yes, the Lord is a human being and we should worship him in his human form,” however, they then attempt to snatch his divinity away from him by claiming that there are three separate and distinct people in the Godhead.
Holland did this when he said:
We declare it is self-evident from the scriptures that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are separate persons, three divine beings.
(Timecode 5:56)
He dropped in the term, “self-evident” so that it sounded like the Declaration of Independence.
While both the Nicene and Mormon doctrines attempt to explain the nature of God, they fall short by fragmenting the unity of God into multiple persons or beings. The true understanding of the Divine is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not separate entities but are fully unified within the Lord Jesus Christ. This unity is central to understanding the Lord’s Divinity and his work in salvation, which transcends the confusion and division introduced by both traditional and Mormon interpretations of the Trinity.
Swedenborg’s opus, “True Christianity”
Worshiping the Lord in human form is a good thing; however, believing in three separate beings isn’t. At the Lord’s resurrection, the three aspects of the Trinity were fully glorified and united in one person as the Divine Human. To say there are three gods denies the Divine Human of the Lord and places his divinity elsewhere. This, in effect, converts the LDS doctrine into faith alone, which is the same, and no better than, the Protestant doctrine.
“Faith alone” means a system of religion, rituals, and membership, on their own, as opposed to love and caring for all mankind, which is the internal goodwill for everyone that should underpin them.
They often say that the Mormon Church and its doctrine is a true restoration of the gospel, but it isn’t. Rather, the Lord gave us the true restoration of the gospel, in Swedenborg’s opus, True Christianity, where the Lord made it clear how and why God is one person.
The reason is because True Christianity teaches that faith isn’t the linchpin for salvation, but rather love and caring united to faith are, regardless of religion — and as a result, anyone is able to be saved, from any religion, who believes in one God (or is able to accept that belief after death), and who lives well and intends well towards all others in both their public and private life — because this is what it means to truly worship the Lord (John 14:21).
It explains the nature of God and the Trinity and how he is one person, how and why he’s not three and why that’s important to know and acknowledge, the decline of the church shortly after he ascended to heaven, the true inner meaning in scripture, and his plans for the future.
The Greek god Aeolus, or the “god of the winds.”
Many false Christians envision the Holy Ghost to be something like this, a separate god who works alongside the Father, with as much divinity as him. But this is false, and is paganism. The Holy Ghost, or Holy Spirit, is nothing else than the Lord Jesus Christ, acting through good spirits and angels, who are not divine. Only the Lord is Divine.
The truth is that dividing God or the divine essence into three persons, each of whom is individually a god in his own right, causes denial of God.
It is like someone entering a church for worship and seeing a triptych above the altar with one god portrayed as the ancient of days, another god as a high priest, and a third god as Aeolus flying in the air, with an inscription reading, These Three Are One God. Or perhaps it is like the same person seeing a painting above the altar that portrays God’s unity and trinity as a deformed person with three heads protruding from one body or three bodies sharing a single head. If people enter heaven with this as their picture of God, they will definitely be thrown out headfirst, even if they plead that the head or heads stand for God’s essence and the body or bodies stand for God’s distinctly different properties.
They say, “we believe God is one in essence even though we believe there are three people in the Godhead.”
This is exactly what most people say who claim to be Christians but who aren’t really:
I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews (meaning the Lord’s people, who are in the goodness of love), and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.
According to the Lord (Matthew 7:23), they aren’t allowed into heaven until and unless they acknowledge that his humanity was made divine and that his divinity exists only in him.
While it might appear a bit harsh at the outset, the reason is because to do otherwise correlates with internal corruption. Whenever anyone teaches that God is three people, that’s a smoking gun; a clue that something is off. It’s disingenuous. While we cannot know for sure during mortality who is and isn’t damned or saved, we can judge what people say and do and whether it’s true or false and whether we’ll choose to simply go along with it or to take a stand, warn others, and protect them from being hurt by the rot present in the churches.
By Swedenborg:
The faith of the modern-day church has given birth to horrifying offspring in the past, and is producing more such offspring now: for example, the notion that there is instantaneous salvation as a result of the direct intervention of mercy; that there is predestination; that God cares only for our faith and pays no attention to our actions; that there is no bond that unites goodwill and faith; that as we undergo conversion we are like a log of wood; and many more teachings of the kind. Another problem has been the adoption of false principles of reason that are based on the teaching that we are justified by our faith alone and the teaching concerning the person of Christ, and the use of these principles to judge the uses and benefits of the sacraments (baptism and the Holy Supper). From the earliest centuries of Christianity until now, heresies have been leaping forth from a single source: the body of teaching based on the idea that there are three gods.
About Jeffrey R. Holland, watching him teach such a false idea with apparent confidence, that there are three gods, makes it clear to me just how misguided he is, since I know heaven considers it blasphemous. He speaks from the pulpit like he knows what he is talking about, but he either has absolutely no idea what he’s saying, or he knows it, and is saying it intentionally. I hope it isn’t the latter, but either way, we need to recognize that what he’s preaching is false and not bite into the apple.
Another problem was at the end of the video, how Holland says:
I know that only by relying wholly on his merits, mercy, and everlasting grace, can we gain eternal life.
This is also deceptive phrasing because there is a difference between acknowledging the Lord’s mercy and relying on it as if it’s given sola fide, or by faith alone, as the Lord taught:
Not every one that says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that does the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
This teaches that salvation cannot come from faith alone, or by simply relying on his grace without an active commitment to living a life of caring and repentance. True faith is inseparable from love and good works, as both must be present for spiritual regeneration. The Lord’s mercy is freely given, but it is through living according to his commandments that we open ourselves to that mercy and receive salvation.
To rely on the Lord’s mercy, merit, and grace, without active participation, is the same as the false teachings of sola fide and sola gratia, or “faith alone” and “grace alone,” which the Lord refuted above, as well as debunked in True Christianity and Apocalypse Revealed.
If the Mormon Church claims the same tenets as Protestants — who also claim that faith alone is sufficient for heaven, it being the central tenet of their doctrine — how can they be the true restoration of the Lord’s church?
The teachings of faith of the modern-day church attribute to God qualities that are merely human: they say, for example, that God looked at the human race with anger; that he needed to be reconciled to us; that he was in fact reconciled through his love for his Son and through the Son’s intercession; that he needed to be appeased by seeing his Son’s wretched suffering, and this brought him back into a merciful attitude; that he assigns the Son’s justice to unjust people who beg him for it on the basis of their faith alone, and turns them from enemies into friends and from children of wrath into children of grace.
Surely everyone knows that God is compassion and mercy itself. He is absolute love and absolute goodness. These qualities constitute his underlying reality or essence. Surely, then, everyone sees the contradiction in saying that compassion itself or absolute goodness could look at the human race with anger, become our enemy, turn away from us, and lock us all into damnation and nevertheless continue to be his own divine essence, to be God. Attitudes and actions of that kind belong to a wicked person, not a virtuous one. They belong to an angel of hell, not an angel of heaven. It is horrendous to attribute them to God.
The fact that things like this have been taught is clear from direct statements made by many of the founders, the councils, and the churches as a whole, from the first centuries of Christianity right up to the present day.
It is also clear from indirect evidence. There are derivative teachings that must have come from thoughts like these as their source, the way effects come from a cause or bodily actions from a brain. For instance, the notion that God needed to be reconciled to us; that he was in fact reconciled through his love for his Son and through the Son’s intercession and mediation; that God needed to be appeased by seeing his Son’s final wretched suffering, and that this brought him back and more or less forced him to adopt a merciful attitude; that God went from being our enemy to being our friend and adopted us (“children of wrath” that we are) as children of grace.
There were theologians who assigned to God attributes that are merely human and unworthy of God. Their purpose in doing so was to preserve the integrity of the doctrine of justification, once it was established, and dress it up in some plausible fashion. They said that anger, revenge, damnation, and other things of the kind were traits possessed by God’s justice, and this is why such things are mentioned so many times in the Word and are attributed to God.
What that mindset results in is that they believe they are saved because they are Mormon / LDS, rather than because of the true intentions towards others within them. Once again, it’s exceptionalism, that only they are the saved people of God, only Mormons, or only Protestants, etc. The Lord taught that the true church is not confined to a particular denomination or religious group, but exists wherever people live according to love and truth, both inwardly and outwardly.
Many Mormons will then say, “Trust us by our fruits. Are we not living a good life?”
But then we heard a clap of thunder and saw a flash of lightning from above; and presently an angel appeared… who cried out… “Do not listen to them! They have not abandoned their earlier ‘faith,’ which teaches that God the Father took pity for the sake of the Son. That type of faith is not faith in the Lord... Only repent and turn to the Lord, and you will have faith. Before then, ‘faith’ is not faith having any life in it.”
This comes from the Lord’s words a few verses earlier in Matthew 7, 16 - 18:
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Even so every good tree brings forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit.
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
And this is, of course, true — knowing that if there is a worm in the middle of the fruit, it obviously isn’t good fruit, even if it appears that way on the surface. If there is a worm in the middle of it, it is the same idea as it being “inwardly a ravening wolf.”
They think only of moral charity and its civic and political goods, which they call goods of faith, but which are absolutely not. For an atheist can do the same things in the same way and give them the same appearance. Therefore they unanimously say that no one is saved by any works, but by faith alone.
…By joining their Church.
They say that “an apple tree produces apples.”
However, if a person does good deeds (solely) for the sake of his salvation… then the apples are inwardly rotten and full of worms.
Swedenborg explained that a moral life alone is not good if it isn’t accompanied by a spiritual life that is correctly in alignment with the Lord’s love, rather than a fake, mirror image of it.
To do moral, civil, or political goods for the sake of oneself isn’t good, because it isn’t eternal or truly charitable. But to do those good things for the sake of the Lord, is good, because that is eternal, and comes from him. This latter type of good is what is called truly “spiritual.”
According to the Lord, outwardly moral behavior is insufficient on its own. True moral life must arise from internal spiritual life, motivated by genuine love for him and caring towards others. A person who performs good deeds solely for external reasons, such as self-benefit or reputation, may appear moral, but doesn’t contain an internal connection to the Lord. Thus, salvation comes not from external morality alone, but from an internal life aligned with the Lord’s divine order, flowing outward into actions of caring.
Moral life from the love of self and the world is not in itself moral life, although it seems to be moral; for the man acting thus acts well, sincerely, and justly for the sake of self and the world only, and what is good, sincere, and just serves him as means to an end, which is, either that he may be raised above others and rule over them, or that he may gain wealth; and of these things he thinks in his spirit, or when he is by himself secretly; but these things that he thinks he does not dare to avow openly, because they would destroy the good opinion others have of him, and thus destroy the means by which he wishes to attain his ends.
From this it can be seen that there lies within the moral life of such a man nothing else than to acquire all things in preference to others, thus that he wishes to have all others to serve him, or to gain possession of their goods; from which it is evident that his moral life is not in itself a moral life; for if he should gain what he aims at, or what he has as an end, he would subject others to himself as slaves, and would deprive them of their goods. And as all means savor of the end, and in their essence are of the same quality as their ends, for which reason they are also called intermediate ends, therefore such a life, regarded in itself, is merely craftiness and fraud.
And this also becomes clearly evident in the case of those with whom these external bonds are released, as takes place, when engaged in lawsuits against their fellows, when they desire nothing so much as to subvert justice, and secure the good will of the judge or the favor of the king, and this secretly, that they may deprive others of their goods; and when they obtain this, they rejoice in spirit and in heart. This is still more evident in the case of kings who place honor in wars and victories, that they find the highest joy of their hearts in subjugating provinces and kingdoms, and where resistance is made, in depriving the vanquished of all their goods, and even of life. Such also is the delight of many who engage at such times in military service. This becomes still more evident with all of this character when they become spirits, which is immediately after the death of the body. As they then think and act from their spirit, they rush into every wickedness according to their love, however morally they may have lived in appearance while in the world.
Just because it looks like a sheep doesn’t mean that’s what it is.
“That thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead,” signifies the quality of their thought, in that they think themselves to be alive, because they are living a moral life, when yet they are dead. This is evident from the signification of “name,” as being quality of state; also from the signification of “living,” as being to have spiritual life; also from the signification of “being dead,” as being not to have spiritual life, but only moral life without it. This is “being dead,” because in the Word “life” signifies the life of heaven with man, which is there also called “life eternal;” while “death” signifies the life of hell, which life in the Word is called “death,” because it is the privation of the life of heaven. Here, therefore, “thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead,” signifies thinking that they have spiritual life, and thus are saved, because they are living a moral life, when yet they are spiritually dead. But how this is to be understood can be seen from what was said above n. 182 of each life, spiritual and moral, namely, that moral life apart from spiritual life is the life of the love of self and the love of the world, while moral life that is from spiritual life is a life of love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor; this life is the life of heaven, but the other life is what is called spiritual death. When this is understood, it can be known what is meant here by “being alive and yet being dead.”
The case with acknowledging the Lord’s mercy, however, rather than relying wholly on it, is different, and necessary.
“Life” signifies the Lord, and thence salvation and heaven, because all of life is from one only Fountain, and that only Fountain of life is the Lord, while angels and men are merely forms receiving life from Him. The Life itself that proceeds from the Lord and fills heaven and the world, is the life of His love, and in heaven this appears as light, and because this light is life it enlightens the minds of angels, and enables them to understand and be wise. From this it is that the Lord calls Himself not only “the Life” but also “the Light.”
The reason for this is because the Lord’s merit doesn’t cover your sins if you don’t partner with him and turn away from your sins, and towards Him, as if on your own. Swedenborg wrote that the power to do so still comes from the Lord, but you have to engage yourself in the process in order for it to be granted. That’s why he said that “relying on the Lord’s merits” is the wrong wording and the wrong concept — a concept not taught by the Lord anywhere in his Word (Apocalypse Revealed #417).
But spiritual life is wholly different, because it has a different origin; for it is from love to God and love towards the neighbor. Consequently, the moral life also of those who are spiritual is different, and is a truly moral life; for these, when they think in their spirit, which takes place when they are thinking secretly by themselves, do not think from self and the world, but from the Lord and heaven; for the interiors of their minds, that is, of their thought and will, are actually elevated by the Lord into heaven, and are there conjoined to Him; thus the Lord flows into their thoughts, intentions, and ends, and governs them and withdraws them from their proprium (their ego), which is solely from the love of self and of the world. The moral life of such persons is, in appearance, like the moral life of those described above, and yet their moral life is spiritual, because it is from a spiritual origin. Their moral life is simply an effect of spiritual life, which is the efficient cause, thus the origin. For they act well, sincerely, and justly with their fellows from fear of God and from love of the neighbor; in these loves the Lord keeps their mind and disposition; consequently when they become spirits, which takes place when the body dies, they think and act intelligently and wisely, and are elevated into heaven. Of these it may be said, that with them every good of love and every truth of faith flows in out of heaven, that is, through heaven from the Lord. But this is not true of those described above; for their good is not the good of heaven, nor is their truth the truth of heaven; but what they call good is the delight of the lust of the flesh, and it is falsity therefrom that they call truth; these flow into them from self and from the world. From this it can also be known what moral life from spiritual life is, and what moral life apart from spiritual life is; namely, that moral life from spiritual life is truly moral life, which may be called spiritual, since it has its cause and origin in the spiritual; but that moral life apart from spiritual life is not moral life, and may be called infernal, for so far as the love of self and of the world reign in it, so far it is fraudulent and hypocritical.
For this reason, many people who claim to be Christians aren’t truly Christians because they look forward to a literal rather than metaphorical Second Coming, because they believe they will be exalted as saints simply because they claim to be Christians or because they are living a moral life outwardly, like the Jews hoped for when looking for the coming of the Messiah. But, as we know, the Jews didn’t get the type of Messiah that they wanted. Rather than a military leader, they got a Shepard; a spiritual leader. Just like the Jews, the Catholics, and the Protestants; the Mormons are looking for the Lord to be a military leader and to come to destroy those outside of their faith tradition with fire and brimstone, and because they read the scriptures literally rather than spiritually, they lack true understanding.
It isn’t going to happen like that because that’s not who he is. The Lord is not a military conquerer in a tribal sense; he’s a Savior, who cares about everyone’s salvation:
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
He may support troops and angels to protect the innocent and expel the wicked, but his incentive behind it is never derived from tribal motivations, nor does he take any joy in the destruction of the wicked for its own sake:
Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’
Swedenborg explains this:
Mention of “the anger of God” in the Word actually refers to that which is evil in us. Because this evil goes against God it is called the anger of God. This expression does not mean that God is angry at us but that our own evil makes us angry at God. Because evil carries its own punishment with it (just as goodness carries its own reward), when evil brings punishment on us it looks as though God is punishing us.
This is the same, though, as criminals blaming the law for their own punishment, or our blaming the fire for burning us when we put our hand in it, or our blaming the drawn sword in the guard’s hand when we hurl ourselves onto the tip of it. This is the nature of God’s justice.
These are features of the Word’s literal meaning. They occur because the literal meaning is written in correspondences and in expressions of an appearance. These features do not appear in the Word’s spiritual meaning, however; in this meaning the truth stands forth in its own light.
I can attest that when angels hear anyone saying God was angry and locked the whole human race into damnation, or was reconciled from being our enemy through the Son as a second God born from the first God, they become like people who are about to vomit because their stomachs and internal organs have been violently heaved this way and that.
The angels say, “What more insane thing could anyone possibly say about God?”
How did it come about that theologians attributed merely human qualities to God? The underlying cause is that all spiritual perception and enlightenment come from the Lord alone. The Lord is the Word, or divine truth. He is the true light that enlightens everyone (John 1:1, 9). He says, “I have come into the world as a light so that anyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness” (John 12:46). This light and the awareness that is gained from it flow only into people who acknowledge the Lord as the God of heaven and earth and who turn to him alone. This light and awareness do not flow into people who think in terms of three gods, as has been happening since the early establishment of the Christian church. Because the idea of three gods is an earthly notion, the only light it receives is earthly. It is incapable of opening up to receive any inflow of spiritual light. This is why the only qualities people have seen in God have been earthly in nature.
For another thing, if theologians had realized the vast incongruity between their ideas and the true divine essence, and had removed these ideas from the teachings on justification, this would obviously have amounted to a complete abandonment of a Christianity that had always been centered on the worship of three gods. No alternative was available before the predetermined time for the new church, when fullness and restoration would come.
The tone and context that Holland used in his talk splits the Godhead into two or three, whereas the tone and context of the Lord’s words combine them into one.
Holland quotes the Lord out of context. At 5:15 in the clip, he says:
That they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
Within the whole context, the Lord is saying that all power was given to the Son (Matthew 28: 18), his Divine Human, and that his Divine Human is the manifestation of God.
In John 17:3, the Greek word καί is traditionally translated as “and,” making it seem like Jesus is listing two separate persons to be known for eternal life: the Father and Jesus Christ. However, καί can also mean “even” or “indeed,” as an affirmative representation, which introduces a clarification rather than a separate item in a list.
If read this way, the verse is understood as:
“Eternal life is to know you, the only true God, indeed, Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
This interpretation clarifies the truth that knowing the Father is inseparable from knowing Jesus Christ, rather than listing them as two separate beings. While most translations take the conjunctive reading, the explanatory reading is grammatically accurate and aligns with other biblical passages where καί functions as a clarifier rather than a mere conjunction.
This makes it clear that Jesus Christ is the image and likeness of God, rather than another person.
Mormon apologists will say things like, “Well, we only use the KJV Bible,” not understanding that any translation isn’t sacrosanct, but the meaning is, and so their focus shouldn’t be on the translation itself but rather on the intent of its author (the Lord).
As Holland misquotes the Lord, he has a little smirk afterwards, like he thinks he’s getting away with something.
Just because it’s wearing a suit doesn’t mean it’s not a bear.
By Swedenborg:
The human mind is like a house of three stories: in the lowest are those who have confirmed their belief in three gods from eternity, while in the second and third stories are those who acknowledge and believe in one God in a visible human form, who is the Lord God the Savior. The sensual and corporeal man, since he is merely natural, is, regarded in himself, nothing but an animal, and differs from the brute beast only in being able to speak and reason. He is, therefore, like one living in a menagerie where there are wild beasts of every kind, where now he plays the lion, now the bear, now the tiger, the leopard or the wolf. He may even play the part of the sheep; but he then laughs in his heart.
Again Holland misquotes the Lord at 7:10 in the clip:
Why do you call me good, there is none good, but one, that is God, my Father, is greater than I.
Holland misses the point, here, by quoting this out of context. The Father is Jesus’ inner soul. To understand that you have to think beyond the earth and earthly things, into eternity and immortality. During his ministry on earth, the Lord had not yet been fully glorified. For that reason, he didn’t refer to himself in that state as “good” because he had work to do, to bring his body’s state into alignment with his eternal state, and as a teaching lesson to others, to show us the way to the Father, by doing it himself, as an exemplar.
The Lord Confirms this Truth to Believers
He has spoken to me personally in a vision and affirmed that he is God.
And he has said the same in the scriptures:
Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?
Most assuredly, I say to you, we speak what we know and testify what we have seen, and you do not receive our witness.
If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?”
This is why they don’t have the Heavenly Doctrine. When they hear it, they reject it, because they reason from their tradition and Church rather than from the Lord. It’s the same mistake that the Jews made, even while he was walking among them.
For things are true not because they are what leaders of the Church have so declared and their followers uphold. If that were so one would have to say that the teachings of any Church or religion were the truth simply because they are those of a person’s native soil and are those into which he was born.
When an affection for truth motivates the search a person receives light from the Lord so that he may discern, though unaware of the source of his enlightenment, what the truth is, and may be assured of it in the measure that he is governed by good.
All of the other quotes that Holland mentioned are similarly lacking wisdom, when he uses them, they’re all quoted without that understanding:
I came down not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
This means that the Lord’s inner self (the Father), who dwells within him in eternity, manifested his will in his physical self (the Son). When it’s understood that heaven exists outside of time and space, it’s possible to also understand how this is true without it inferring that there would need to be two people. The Lord has an eternal soul, just as we all do. That soul was manifest in time, just as we are within him. The will that makes up the Father within him, is him; his eternal self, with all of the full essence of existence, wrapped up into one life and one body, manifest in time, through the Son and the life he glorified on earth.
The Son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father do.
This means that the Lord’s outer self (the Son) can do nothing but what his inner self wills (the Father). Every moment of the Lord’s physical life, he didn’t have every contextual aspect of the universe in his mind simultaneously as outer variables, but he did have them enter him as his inner self, that is, he felt it all as love and wisdom, bound into his very essence. This influx of willingness for kindness, love, and goodness within him is, “the Father” — the omnipresent sight of the eternal heaven and everyone within it, manifest in his will to act in goodness by gathering us together within him.
Oh my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
This means that if it would be possible that his inner love (the Father) could allow for another way, that it could or would be so. But his love for humanity was too great, making it impossible. There was no other way for him to manifest his love than to do everything he possibly could for us, as he did on the cross soon after this prayer.
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
The Lord’s infinite love is the very substance of Divine Life; and God is his own Divine Soul, which is centered in his love for all of humanity. Keeping this in mind, when the Lord cried out, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” he was not lamenting abandonment by the Father, for the Father is his soul, which could never forsake him. Rather, he was expressing the anguish of being left alone to fight hell — an internal battle that even the angels could not withstand. During the Lord’s life on earth, he subjugated the hells and restored order in the heavens, doing so by himself, from his Divine Power (Divine Providence #124). This explains why angels comforted Him in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:43) but not on the cross. In the Garden, He was preparing for the final battle, and they could still support him in some capacity. But on the cross, the full force of hell was unleashed upon him, and no angel, nor any human, could endure or assist in the victory that only Divine Power could accomplish. In this sense, “Eli” refers to the Elohim — the divine assembly of angels and humanity — who had failed, leaving him to fight alone.
Yet, through this ultimate trial, he overcame hell, glorified his Human, and made it one with the Divine, ensuring that never again would the heavens or humanity be left unprotected (True Christianity #132).
That they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that you have sent me.
The Lord was resurrected with his body of spiritual substance rather than material matter.
Let’s continue addressing Holland’s concerns.
From Holland:
To acknowledge scriptural evidence that otherwise perfectly united members of the Godhead are nevertheless separate and distinct beings is not to be guilty of polytheism. It is rather part of the great revelation Jesus came to deliver concerning the nature of divine beings. Perhaps the Apostle Paul said it best, “Christ Jesus being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.”
This is incorrect — and it is guilty of polytheism. Paul said, “Jesus Christ being in the form of God.” Paul said it wasn’t robbery for the Lord to say he was equal to God because he is God (as he said, “Before Abraham was, I am.”)
Paul never said that Jesus was a separate God. Many times he said that Jesus is God Himself, such as in Colossians:
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ —
For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
From Holland:
If the idea of an embodied God is repugnant, why are the central doctrines and singularly most distinguishing characteristics of all Christianity the incarnation: the atonement, and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ? If having a body is not only not needed, but not desirable by deity, why did the redeemer of mankind redeem his body, redeeming it from the grasp of death and from the grave, guaranteeing it would never again be separated from his spirit in time or eternity?
Any who dismiss the concept of an embodied God dismiss both the mortal and the resurrected Christ. No one, claiming to be a true Christian, will want to do that.
Good questions — however the logic he used here is misguided because he’s reasoning from his tradition rather than from the Lord. The answers to these questions are all written in True Christianity, which can be found for anyone truly looking for them. In short, Holland is almost on to something by pointing this out, but he lands on the wrong solution as a result of turning to a false idol; a false visage of the Lord, that isn’t actually him; in a way not too dissimilar to that of the false Christians from the Nicene Creed.
The Catholic and Protestant idea that God has no body is a false idea, which Swedenborg emphatically rejected and made clear. He does have a body, and an eternal body that he was resurrected into after his death. However, Swedenborg wrote that the Lord’s body, like that of angels, is made of spiritual substance. This means that the Lord’s body is real, alive, and appears similar to a physical body, with a complete, solid form; just not made of physical matter or limited by material physics.
A portrait of the Lord, by Ray Downing,
based on a digital analysis of the Shroud of Turin.
A person is just as much a person after death, although he is then invisible to the eyes of the material body. This can be established from the cases of the angels seen by Abraham, Hagar, Gideon, Daniel and some of the prophets, from the angels seen in the Lord’s tomb, And afterwards on many occasions by John, as he describes in Revelation. Above all, this is proved by the Lord Himself, who showed by touch and by eating that he was a human being, although he vanished from their sight. Can anyone be so crazy as not to acknowledge that, although invisible, he was just as much a human being? The reason they saw him was that the eyes of their spirit were opened; and when these are opened things in the spiritual world appear just as plain as things in the natural world. The difference between people in the natural world and those in the spiritual world is that those in the spiritual world are clothed with a substantial body, but those in the natural world are clothed with a material body. This, however, has the substantial body within it, and a substantial person can see another one just as clearly as a material person can see another one. But a substantial person cannot see a material one, nor a material person a substantial one, on account of the difference between the material and the substantial. This is capable of being described, but not briefly.
A few sections earlier in True Christianity he also explained:
In the Lord’s glorified human manifestation he cannot appear before any human beings unless he has first opened the eyes of their spirit. The eyes of the spirit cannot be opened in people who are engaged in evils and falsities — in any of the “goats,” whom he placed on his left [Matthew 25:33]. Therefore whenever he showed himself to his disciples, he first opened their eyes. We read, “And their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he became invisible to them” (Luke 24:31). A similar thing happened with the women who were by his tomb after he had risen; this is why they were able to see angels sitting in the tomb and hear them speaking with them. No one can see angels through physical eyes.
Even before the Lord rose, it was not the apostles’ physical eyes but their spiritual eyes that saw the Lord in his glorified human manifestation; after they came out of that state, they appeared to themselves to have been asleep. This is clear from the Lord’s transfiguration in the presence of Peter, James, and John and the fact that they were then “heavy with sleep” (Luke 9:32).
The bottom line is that the Lord is real and is in bodily form (and not formless or merely imagined), but that he’s in the spiritual world now rather than the natural world, and that spiritual substance is just as real as physical matter, and in fact, even more so.
From Holland:
I testify that he had power over death, because he was divine.
Note that, although Holland calls the Lord divine, he also calls two other false gods divine, thus splitting the Trinity and removing the divinity he claimed to have attributed to the Lord.
If all power was given to the Lord, as he said (Matthew 28:18), and knowing that he is divine, then who is the Father as a separate person? Wouldn’t the Father, if thought of as a separate person, then become subordinate? — which would make no sense.
And so where does the divinity of God dwell, if not in the Son? And if the divinity dwells within the Son, we must conclude that the Son and the Father are one in person as well as in spirit.
When Thomas felt him, he said, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28) because he was acknowledging that he was both his earthly master (Lord) and his heavenly master (God) in human form simultaneously. He now acknowledged that his Lord was divine and had power over death, something he didn’t believe earlier.
It was because the Lord was now fully united to the Divine Itself, which is called the Father, that Thomas called Him his Lord and his God.
It’s pretty obvious here that the Lord is God. Who else can raise himself from the dead? And yet, do some of us still doubt that he is God, even today?
Cognitive Dissonance
Mormon doctrine splits the Godhead up into two (and three) people, which represents cognitive dissonance with the Word.
Holland then goes on to talk about how the Father and the Son “appeared as glorified embodied beings” to Joseph Smith. In doing so, he contradicted his earlier testimony. At one moment, he combined them into one, and in the next, he tore them apart.
What I’ve found is that there is an ongoing cognitive dissonance within Mormonism; a back and forth between saying “worship the Father” at one moment and then “worship the Son” at the next moment. This is personified in their image of both the Father and the Son as identical twins who appeared to Joseph Smith. In this way, they create a mirror, or mirage, such that you never know who or what you’re truly looking at.
Swedenborg wrote:
When I even thought about two identical or equal beings, the angels were aghast.
This is because it misses the Lord entirely, because under such a pattern, love and wisdom isn’t united in him. It’s always either love or wisdom — like two identical twins that can never agree on anything.
Holland says:
I think it’s accurate to say that we believe they are one in every significant and eternal aspect imaginable, except believing them to be three persons combined into one substance.
What about the Lord’s teaching in the Gospel of John, such as in John 14: 9?
What Holland is essentially saying is, “We believe they are one, except we don’t believe they are one.”
Confusing.
It’s a desert mirage.
“Look here,” they say, “Oh no, I meant look here…” “No, here!” — meanwhile, you, as the listener, get dizzier and dizzier.
Parched for water, if you follow their mirages, you’ll eventually fall dead.
It should be added further that if it is accepted as a doctrine and acknowledged, that the Lord is one with the Father, and that His Human is Divine from the Divine in Himself, light will be seen in every particular of the Word; for that which is assumed as doctrine and acknowledged from doctrine is in light when the Word is read; moreover, the Lord, from whom is all light and who has all power, will enlighten those who acknowledge this. But on the other hand, if it is assumed and acknowledged as a doctrine that the Divine of the Father is another Divine than the Lord’s, nothing will be seen in light in the Word; since the man who is in that doctrine turns himself from one Divine to the other, and away from the Divine of the Lord which he can see (which is done by thought and faith), to a Divine that he cannot see; for the Lord says:
“You have neither heard the Father’s voice at any time, nor seen His form” (John 5:37; also John 1:18);
and to believe in a Divine and love a Divine that cannot be thought of under any form is impossible.
Because Swedenborg lived and wrote his works before Joseph Smith was born, he wasn’t able to comment directly on Mormonism because it didn’t exist yet. However, the problems that exist today within Mormonism aren’t anything new, and many similar teachings that Swedenborg wrote regarding Catholicism and Protestantism can be applied to it.
For example, about Catholicism:
Roman Catholics today are not at all aware that their church once embraced concepts of the assigning of Christ’s merit to us and of our justification by faith in that. These concepts lie completely buried beneath their external rituals of worship, which are many. Therefore if Catholics give up some of their external rituals, turn directly to God the Savior Jesus Christ, and take both elements in the Holy Eucharist, they are better equipped than Protestants to become part of the New Jerusalem, that is, the Lord’s new church.
This is because, like Mormonism, Catholic sermons and culture tends to direct more of a focus towards taking an active role in good works (unlike Protestantism, which puts more emphasis on taking a passive role). Even though faith alone lurks within Mormonism as well (as was shown by Holland’s talk) all of its members may not be thinking that they are saved by faith alone because, like Catholics, they’re distracted from that portion of the doctrine by rituals and traditions. As Swedenborg wrote, the Lord is able to protect laypeople from the maliciousness of the clergy in this way, until they’re ready to receive the fullness of the gospel from the Lord Himself, whereby there is the belief that salvation comes from all three aspects of the Trinity working together as one: love, faith, and an active role in good works combined, without the necessity for ritual or tradition as a stipulation for salvation.
Roman Catholics before the Reformation had exactly the same teachings as Protestants did after it regarding the assigning of Christ’s merit to us and our being justified by faith in that; the only difference was that Catholics united this faith to goodwill or good works.
The leading reformers — Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin — retained the Roman Catholic dogmas regarding the assigning of Christ’s merit to us and our being justified by faith. They kept those views as they had been, and still were at the time, among Roman Catholics. The reformers separated goodwill or good works from that faith, however, and declared that faith alone saves, for the purpose of clearly differentiating themselves from Roman Catholics with regard to the essentials of the church, which are faith and goodwill.
The leaders of the Protestant Reformation do indeed describe good works as an appendage to faith and even an integral part of faith, but they say we are passive in the doing of them, whereas Roman Catholics say we are active in the doing of them. There is actually strong agreement between Protestants and Catholics on the subjects of faith, works, and our rewards. Clearly, then, these beliefs used to be as important to Roman Catholics as they are now to Protestants.
Nevertheless, today these beliefs have been so thoroughly wiped out among Roman Catholics that they scarcely know the least thing about them. These beliefs have been forgotten not because they were overturned by papal decree but because they were covered over by external facets of worship. In general these are adoring the vicar of Christ, calling on the saints, and venerating images; they are especially things that affect our physical senses with an impression of holiness, such as the Mass, which is conducted in a language people do not understand, the vestments, the candles, the incense, and the spectacular processions; also the mysteries surrounding the Eucharist.
Although the early Roman church believed that faith justifies us through assigning us the merit of Christ, the external facets just listed and many others like them have moved this concept out of sight and removed it from memory, as if it were something buried in the ground, covered with a large stone, and guarded by monks so that it will not be dug up and brought back to mind. The danger in its being brought back to mind is that it would undermine people’s belief in the monks’ supernatural power to forgive their sins, and justify, sanctify, and save them; and that would end the monks’ status as holy, their dominance over others, and their quest for wealth.
You might say that Mormons do the same things as the Catholics, only under a different guise. Rather than adoring the vicar of Christ (the pope) they adore the prophet of the Mormon Church, its apostles, and its prior prophets (“Praise to the man…”). Instead of calling on the saints, and venerating images, they venerate the Mormon scriptures, such as the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenants. Instead of the Mass affecting their physical senses with an impression of holiness, they have the Washing and Anointing, the Endowment Ceremony, Baptisms for the Dead, and Temple Sealing. Instead of candles, incense, and spectacular processions, they have the temple, its grounds, and special temple spaces. Although the Lord allows for temples (Apocalypse Revealed #918), their purpose among Christians should be limited to Baptism (for the living) and the Holy Supper so that they don’t tend towards tribalism and idolatry (True Christianity #670). The key point is that there shouldn’t be any external worship separated from internal worship.
Swedenborg wrote:
External holiness is like a pious garment and chiefly consists in this: that a person places all divine worship in external sanctity when he is in temples. But this is not holy in a person unless his internal is holy, for as a person is internally, so is he externally; the external proceeds from the internal as action from its spirit. Therefore, external holiness without internal holiness is natural and not spiritual.
Hence, it exists equally among the wicked as among the good. Those who place all worship in it are for the most part empty — that is, lacking knowledge of good and truth. Yet goods and truths are the very holy things that are to be known, believed, and loved because they are from the Divine, and thus the Divine is in them.
He warned that in order to make the switch into the restoration of the gospel, and the New Church, you can’t hold to the churches of the past, as Mormonism has done by holding to external rituals as saving ordinances and thus to false tenants of faith alone from Catholicism and Protestantism. The Lord said that trying to do so is like trying to patch an old pair of clothing with a piece of new cloth, and like trying to pour new wine into old wineskins. In the case of the old pair of clothing, it’ll not only shrink and tear, but it’ll be mismatched (Luke 5:36). And with the old wineskins, they’ll not only burst open and spill the wine, but the containers will be destroyed (Luke 5:37-38).
Swedenborg wrote:
The faith of the former church cannot live with the faith of the new church because the two are completely incompatible. The faith of the former church is descended from the idea that there are three gods; the faith of the new church, though, is descended from the idea that there is one God. And because the two are completely incompatible as a result, it is inevitable that if they lived together in us they would collide and cause so much conflict that everything related to the church would be destroyed in us. We would fall into such a state of spiritual madness or else spiritual unconsciousness that we would hardly know what the church was or whether such a thing even existed.
Consequently, people who are deeply committed to the faith of the old church are incapable of embracing the faith of the new church without endangering their own spiritual lives, unless they have first rejected the teachings of the former faith one by one and have uprooted that former faith along with all its live offspring and unhatched eggs (meaning tenets).
What is the New Faith?
Before I demonstrate this proposition, I will first lay before the intellect what goodwill is and where it comes from, what faith is and where it comes from, and therefore what the good works called “fruits” are and where they come from.
Faith is truth. Therefore teachings of faith are the same as teachings of truth. Teachings of truth affect our intellect, and therefore how we think, and what we say as a result. They teach us what we should will and what we should do. They teach that some things are evil and we should abstain from them; they teach that some things are good and we should do them. When we follow these teachings and actually do what is good, our good actions enter into a partnership with the truths we understand, because in these actions our will works together with our intellect. (Good actions have to do with our will and truth has to do with our intellect.) This partnership leads us to a love for what is good, which is the essence of goodwill, and a love for what is true, which is the essence of faith. When combined, these two form a marriage. Good works are the offspring born of this marriage, just as pieces of fruit are the offspring produced by a tree. As a result, there are fruits that are born of goodness and fruits that are born of truth. In the Word, the latter are represented as grapes and the former as olives.
Once we accept that this is the origin of good works, it becomes clear that faith alone can never produce or give birth to any of the works that are known as fruits, any more than a woman by herself without a man can produce any offspring. Therefore “the fruits of faith” is a made-up, meaningless expression.
Nothing in the whole universe was or is ever produced unless it comes from a marriage of two things, one of which relates to goodness and the other to truth, or else one of which relates to evil and the other to falsity. Therefore no works could even be conceived, let alone born, if these two elements did not enter into a kind of marriage. Good actions are produced by a marriage of goodness and truth; evil actions are produced by a marriage of evil and falsity.
Goodwill cannot be united to the faith of the modern-day church; there is no marriage there that could give birth to a good work. This is because the assigning of Christ’s merit is thought to do everything for us. It is thought to forgive our crimes, to make us just, to regenerate us, to sanctify us, and to give us salvation and the life of heaven — and all for free with no effort on our part. If this is true, though, what is goodwill and what is its supposed marriage with faith? It is pointless and meaningless. What is goodwill but an accessory or an adjunct to the assigning of Christ’s merit and to the process whereby we are made just? Goodwill is good for nothing.
Furthermore, a faith based on the idea that there are three gods is wrong, as I have shown above. How can true goodwill have a relationship with a wrongheaded faith?
There are two reasons people give for believing that the modern-day faith has no bond with goodwill. One is that they describe this faith as spiritual in nature, but they see goodwill as merely earthly and moral in nature; and in their opinion no relationship is possible between what is spiritual and what is earthly. The second reason they give is to keep anything that comes from ourselves, and therefore any desire for reward, from becoming mixed up with our faith, since faith is the only thing that saves us.
It is in fact true that there is no bond between goodwill and that faith; but there is a bond between goodwill and the new faith.
—Survey of Teachings of the New Church #48-50
THE faith of the new heaven and the new church in universal form is this: The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, came into the world to gain control over the hells and to glorify his own human nature. If he had not done this, not one mortal could have been saved; those who believe in him are saved.
I say “in universal form” because this concept is universal to the faith and something universal to the faith is going to be present in each and every aspect of it. It is universal to the faith to believe that God is one in essence and in person, to believe that in God there is a trinity, and to believe that the Lord God the Savior Jesus Christ is God. It is universal to the faith to believe that if the Lord had not come into the world not one mortal could have been saved. It is universal to the faith to believe that the Lord came into the world to separate hell from the human race, and that he accomplished this by repeatedly doing battle with hell and conquering it. In this way he gained control over it, put it back into the divine design, and made it obey him. It is universal to the faith to believe that he came into the world to glorify the human nature he took on in the world, that is, to unite it to its divine source. Having gained control over hell and having glorified his human nature, he keeps hell in its place, under obedience to him forever. Since neither of these achievements could have happened except by allowing his human nature to be tested, including even the ultimate test, the suffering on the cross, therefore he underwent that experience. These are universal points of faith regarding the Lord.
For our part, it is universal to the Christian faith that we believe in the Lord, for our believing in him gives us a partnership with him, and through this partnership comes salvation. To believe in him is to have confidence that he saves; and because only those who live good lives can have such confidence, this too is meant by believing in him.
…
For our part, the specifics of faith are these:
1. There is one God, the divine trinity exists within him, and he is the Lord God the Savior Jesus Christ.
2. Believing in him is a faith that saves.
3. We must abstain from doing things that are evil — they belong to the Devil and come from the Devil.
4. We must do things that are good — they belong to God and come from God.
5. We must do these things as if we ourselves were doing them, but we must believe that they come from the Lord working with us and through us.
The first two points have to do with faith; the second two have to do with goodwill; and the fifth has to do with the partnership between goodwill and faith, the partnership between the Lord and us.
