The Mormon Dilemma

A typical ploy among modern day Mormon apologists is to appeal to texts where the Father is said to be the only true God as a way of proving their belief that Jesus is not a member of a Triune Godhead, but is some a secondary, inferior Deity.

For instance, it is not uncommon for these polemicists to cite John 17:3: 

“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

They reason from this that Jesus cannot be the same Being and God as the Father, since the latter is expressly said by Christ to be the only true God.

Unfortunately for these Mormons this argument actually backfires against them and ends up refuting their claims and beliefs.  

According to official Mormon teaching, Jesus is that very Jehovah God of the Old Testament who later became a flesh and blood human being.

I cite from the Mormons’ official website, which explicitly states this:

We are frequently told that Jesus Christ is the God of the Old Testament (see Bible Dictionary, “Jehovah,” 710–11). But when we open our Bibles, we find little evidence that this is so.¹ What is missing in the translations is clear in the original Hebrew text, where Jehovah, the Savior’s Old Testament name, appears over 5,000 times!…

Knowing the distinction between LORD and Lord helps us understand the story of Hannah and Eli in 1 Samuel 1:1–28. In verse 11, Hannah makes a vow with the LORD for a child. Then when Eli, the high priest, accuses her of being drunk (v. 14), Hannah says, “No, my lord.” Her use of lord shows her reverence for the high priest. Her calling upon the LORD shows her pleading with Jehovah. When we understand the distinctions between LORD, Lord, and lord, we can see what publishers have done. We can find Jesus Christ in the Old Testament by substituting Jehovah for LORD whenever it appears. Then something wonderful happens. Jehovah, who is Jesus Christ, appears from beginning to end of this great book as the God of the Old Testament.³

The Savior’s ministry on earth did not begin with His birth. He is “the eternal I AM,” the Lord God Omnipotent who appeared to the patriarchs and prophets of old, who delivered Israel from Egypt, who gave the law on Sinai, and who guided and inspired the righteous prophets, priests, seers, judges, and kings of the Old Testament. (LORD = Jehovah; emphasis mine)

And:

We claim scriptural authority for the assertion that Jesus Christ was and is God the Creator, the God who revealed Himself to Adam, Enoch, and all the antediluvial patriarchs and prophets down to Noah; the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the God of Israel as a united people, and the God of Ephraim and Judah after the disruption of the Hebrew nation; the God who made Himself known to the prophets from Moses to Malachi; the God of the Old Testament record; and the God of the Nephites. We affirm that Jesus Christ was and is Jehovah, the Eternal One…

Jesus, when once assailed with question and criticism from certain Jews who regarded their Abrahamic lineage as an assurance of divine preferment, met their abusive words with the declaration: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.”^w The true significance of this saying would be more plainly expressed were the sentence punctuated and pointed as follows: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham, was I Am”; which means the same as had He said—Before Abraham, was I, Jehovah. The captious Jews were so offended at hearing Him use a name which, through an erroneous rendering of an earlier scripture,^x they held was not to be uttered on pain of death, that they immediately took up stones with the intent of killing Him. The Jews regarded Jehovah as an ineffable name, not to be spoken; they substituted for it the sacred, though to them the not-forbidden name, Adonai, signifying the Lord. The original of the terms Lord and God as they appear in the Old Testament, was either Yahveh or Adonai; and the divine Being designated by these sacred names was, as shown by the scriptures cited, Jesus the Christ. John, evangelist and apostle, positively identifies Jesus Christ with Adonai, or the Lord who spoke through the voice of Isaiah,^y and with Jehovah who spoke through Zechariah.^z

The name Elohim is of frequent occurrence in the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament, though it is not found in our English versions. In form the word is a Hebrew plural noun;^a but it connotes the plurality of excellence or intensity, rather than distinctively of number. It is expressive of supreme or absolute exaltation and power. Elohim, as understood and used in the restored Church of Jesus Christ, is the name-title of God the Eternal Father, whose firstborn Son in the spirit is Jehovah—the Only Begotten in the flesh, Jesus Christ.

Jesus of Nazareth, who in solemn testimony to the Jews declared Himself the I Am or Jehovah, who was God before Abraham lived on earth, was the same Being who is repeatedly proclaimed as the God who made covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God who led Israel from the bondage of Egypt to the freedom of the promised land, the one and only God known by direct and personal revelation to the Hebrew prophets in general.

The identity of Jesus Christ with the Jehovah of the Israelites was well understood by the Nephite prophets, and the truth of their teachings was confirmed by the risen Lord who manifested Himself unto them shortly after His ascension from the midst of the apostles at Jerusalem. This is the record: “And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto them saying, Arise and come forth unto me, that ye may thrust your hands into my side, and also that ye may feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am the God of Israel, and the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world.”^b

… God the Creator, the Jehovah of Israel, the Savior and Redeemer of all nations, kindreds and tongues, are the same, and He is Jesus the Christ. (Chapter 4: The Antemortal Godship of Christ; emphasis mine)

Now this places these Mormon debaters in a major dilemma.

The Old Testament emphatically stresses the point of Jehovah being the only true God besides whom no other god exists:

“Now the Spirit of God came on Azariah the son of Oded, and he went out to meet Asa and said to him, ‘Listen to me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin: Yahweh is with you when you are with Him. And if you seek Him, He will be found; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you. Now for many days Israel was without the true God and without a teaching priest and without law. But in their distress they turned to Yahweh, the God of Israel, and they searched for Him, and He was found by them.’” 2 Chronicles 15:1-4   

“You alone are Yahweh. You have made the heavens, The heaven of heavens with all their host, The earth and all that is on it, The seas and all that is in them. You give life to all of them And the heavenly host bows down to You.” Nehemiah 9:6

“For Yahweh is a great God And a great King above all gods, In whose hand are the depths of the earth, The peaks of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for it was He who made it, And His hands formed the dry land.” Psalm 95:3-5

“Then Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and he went up to the house of Yahweh and spread it out before Yahweh. And Hezekiah prayed to Yahweh saying, ‘O Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, who is enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Incline Your ear, O Yahweh, and hear; open Your eyes, O Yahweh, and see; and listen to all the words of Sennacherib, who sent them to reproach the living God. Truly, O Yahweh, the kings of Assyria have laid waste to all the countries and their lands and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. But now, O Yahweh our God, save us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You are Yahweh, You alone.’” Isaiah 37:14-20  

“There is none like You, O Yahweh; You are great, and great is Your name in might. Who would not fear You, O King of the nations? Indeed it is Your due! For among all the wise men of the nations And in all their kingdoms, There is none like You. But they are altogether senseless and foolish; They are in a discipline of vanities—it is mere wood! Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish, And gold from Uphaz, The work of a craftsman and of the hands of a goldsmith; Blue and purple are their clothing; They are all the work of wise craftsmen.

“But Yahweh is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes, And the nations cannot endure His indignation. Thus you shall say to them, ‘The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.’ 

“It is He who made the earth by His power, Who established the world by His wisdom; And by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens. When He gives forth His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth; He makes lightning for the rain, And brings out the wind from His storehouses. Every man is senseless, devoid of knowledge; Every goldsmith is put to shame by his graven images; For his molten images are a lie, And there is no breath in them. They are vanity, a work of mockery; In the time of their punishment they will perish. The portion of Jacob is not like these; For the Maker of all is He, And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance; Yahweh of hosts is His name.” Jeremiah 10:6-16 

Since Jesus is Jehovah then this proves that he must be the only true God. However, since he is not the Father this means that both the Father and the Son must both be the only true God, and therefore must in fact possess the same infinite, uncreated, eternal Being. There’s simply no way around this.

In a bit of irony, the very text which these Mormon apologists cite ends up backfiring against them by proving that they worship false gods!

Instead of helping their case, John 17:3 actually proves that Mormons do not affirm the only true God of inspired Scripture. The Scriptures present the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as the only true God without conflating their Persons by collapsing them into one and the same Self or Person.   

Since Mormonism rejects the Triune nature of the only true God, this means that Mormons are inevitably worshiping a false god, in fact many false gods, and are therefore no different from the pagan nations surrounding Israel. 

Ironic indeed!

All scriptural references taken from the Legacy Standard Bible (LSB). 

Further Reading

THE BIBLICAL GOD VERSUS THE MORMON GODS

MORMON GOD VERSUS THE TRUE GOD

MORMON POLYTHEISM REVISITED

THE BIBLICAL GOD VERSUS THE MORMON GODS PT. 2

WHO IS THE ELOHIM OF MORMONISM?

THE MORMON SATAN & PREMORTALITY

15 Eerie Similarities Between Islam & Mormonism

JOSEPH SMITH THE FALSE PROPHET DEBATE

NOTES FOR MORMON DEBATE