madeleine wrote:The Neoplatonism argument is weak, in my opinion. We use language to describe what is believed. The councils at Nicaea did not formulate new doctrines, they described existing doctrines.
No disrespect toward the early Christian fathers. They were interpreting the biblical data they had before them, and came up with certain statements of belief.
It is when these creeds are used as a checklist to denounce others' Christianity that it becomes troubling for me. There is no doubt that these theologians were influenced by neo-Platonism--it is not necessarily bad that they were, but some neo-Platonic ideas crept into the creeds, and they are nowhere to be found in the Bible (e.g. hypostasis).
I'm not convinced that Mormons believe in the divinity of Jesus. There are major differences in LDS teaching that make both the Father and Son, of the same *thing* as creatures such as ourselves. A dilution of divinity, a lowering of God to something less than what Christians understand as divine. As an example Mormons believe that God becomes, which is contradictory to Christian understanding of what it means to be divine. God IS.
The philosophies of becoming and being are Platonic and Aristotelian--Greek philosophies. They aren't in the Bible.
Again, we believe that Jesus created the earth and the firmament, that He is Jehova of the Old Testament, that He died to redeem us so that we might have eternal life. His divinity is not in question for Mormons.
As for the Bible, your OP contains an assumption that all Christians are sola scriptura. Catholics and Orthodox are not sola scriptura, instead we hold that sola scriptura is a heresy. :) Where does that leave us? It leaves us at the point of the Mormon idea of "great apostasy", which I see as a "great conspiracy theory". ;)
In this thread, I wanted to discuss whether the Bible alone could determine whether someone was or was not Christian. If it could not (which seems to be the case), then we can move onto extra-biblical things (in a different thread).