Early Latter Day Saint Concepts
Most early Latter Day Saints came from a Protestant background, believing in the doctrine of Trinity that had been developed during the early centuries of Christianity. Before about 1835, Mormon theological teachings were similar to that established view. However, Smith's teachings regarding the nature of the Godhead developed during his lifetime, becoming most fully elaborated in the few years prior to his murder in 1844. Beginning as an unelaborated description of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as being "One", Smith taught that the Father and the Son were distinct personal members of the Godhead as early as 1832 (See D&C 76:12-24). Smith's public teachings later described the Father and Son as possessing distinct physical bodies, being one together with the Holy Ghost, not in material substance, but instead united in spirit, glory, and purpose–a view sometimes called social trinitarianism.
Read more about this topic: God In Mormonism
Famous quotes containing the words early, day, saint and/or concepts:
“They circumcised women, little girls, in Jesus’s time. Did he know? Did the subject anger or embarrass him? Did the early church erase the record? Jesus himself was circumcised; perhaps he thought only the cutting done to him was done to women, and therefore, since he survived, it was all right.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“Men like me are impossible until the day when they become necessary.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Et Saint Apollinaire, raide et ascétique,
Vieille usine désaffectée de Dieu, tient encore
Dans ses pierres éecroulantes la forme précise de Byzance.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)